It's really hard to see anyone disliking this sweet-natured, if sharp-tongued story of a southern American Jewish lady (Jessica Tandy, winning an Oscar), forced by her son (Dan Aykroyd) to take on a black chauffeur (Morgan Freeman), after she can no longer be trusted behind her own wheel. This is 1948, and the winds of change are only just beginning to blow through the magnolias outside her Georgia mansion. Still 'n' all, it's not his colour she objects to, merely his presence. At first, she refuses to be driven in her own car, but soon she's in the back seat, drawing him progressively into her confidence. Both mistress and servant have a sardonic sense of humour and it's the beginning of a 25-year friendship, not admitted as such by the tradition-bound Miss Daisy until the end of the film. The movie (winner of the Best Film Oscar) gently probes the demeaning position of blacks in the south, but only in so far as it fits writer Alfred Uhry's policy of education by an entertaining kind of persuasion. What's more important is the relationship between the three main characters, and this is carefully, flawlessly sketched in by Tandy, Freeman and Aykroyd, the last quietly effective in a different kind of assignment from his raunchy comedy roles.

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