Doesn't this look enticing?

Your answer is as good as mine - I don't remember putting it in my NetFlix queue and it arrived in my mailbox a few days ago. But if I have to suffer, you do too.

As you may have surmised, "Greenfingers" languidly tells the story of a group of bland hardened British criminals that are placed in an 'experimental prison'. "Amazingly," the main bloke of the story (known as Colin Briggs to his friends) has a knack for gardening, so he and a few other "wacky prisoners" are assigned to cultivate a garden as part of the prison's rehabilitation project in hopes that they'll be able to garden after being released. We have seen it all before - the dregs of society band together and make good, all in an hour and a half with an uplifting, but ambiguous ending that keeps us from seeing the main characters being tossed out on the street.

Print this image and receive free labor from the prisoner of your choice, just like Starbucks!

While "Greenfingers" is supposably based on a true story, it can also be easily passed off as another remake of "The Longest Yard" (which was remade into "Mean Machine" a year after this was released) with gardening replacing football and without all the conflict or "character motivation." Despite the fact that several of the "pack of unthreatening murderous scoundrels" are in jail for being murderers and some drawn out monologues of their "atrocious crimes," they act like perfect gentlemen getting in scuffles about where the daffodils should be planted and throwing fisticuffs over a crushed scented double violet. No OZ or "Ghosts of the Civil Dead"-like bloody outbursts here!

But seriously - this film makes the Aristotelian Plot Curve look like a bunny hill. The director tries to add in a bit of suspense in the film by revealing the only major plot point - breaking into a flower shop - at the opening of the film. Other than adding a slight bit of confusion into the mix, it does (like most of the plot "twists") nothing. Character development? It's hard to flesh out cardboard cutouts, especially when the main characters are quite content in their current environment. Oh, and the obligatory "romances" are made out of convenience and subsequent repercussions come off like an after-school special. Every young woman falls into their criminal lover's lap quickly, without so much of a thrashing of protest. And by every young woman in the film, I mean all two of them. One gets paired with Mr. Briggs, and the other with a fellow gardening rapscallion with no respect for anyone or anything. Guess whose love interest gets knocked up?

This man killed 15 men, two women and a child with this hose. And now he's cultivating for Her Majesty!

Not all is bad though - performances are a bit above par - no stand out performances (even from the often great Helen Mirren) and visually there aren't any huge flub-ups. Unfortunately, with such visually resonant material as expertly-designed gardens you would expect some jaw-dropping exposition shots, but they never materialize. You will enjoy the soundtrack, as long as you don't think using Tears for Fears "Sowing The Seeds Of Love" during a horticultural montage is over-the-top.

It would be nice to say that I was pleasantly surprised by Greenfingers but I just can't muster up that large of a lie. While there is nothing grossly incompetent about the film, there is certainly nothing here to prove that I should bother giving one whit about these formulaic weepy melodramas. It gets 4 out of 10 posies.