Movie review: “The Help”
Listed on wimgo Movies under Drama
From Wednesday’s Life section of The Oklahoman. 3 1/2 of 4 stars.
Movie review: “The Help”
Even moviegoers who haven’t read Kathryn Stockett’s best-seller can see the loving care that writer-director Tate Taylor, the novelist’s best pal, has put into turning her runaway best-seller into a balanced and beautiful film.
Kathryn Stockett’s popular period story “The Help” does more than just get by with a little help from her friends in its transformation to the big screen.
Even moviegoers who haven’t read Stockett’s best-seller can see the loving care that writer-director Tate Taylor, the novelist’s best pal, has put into turning her runaway best-seller into a balanced and beautiful film. “The Help” is the rare Southern melodrama that is moving but mostly dodges the mawkish, touching while largely avoiding the treacly, and the story’s still-sensitive racial and cultural issues are handled with just the right measures of delicacy and boldness.
Taylor, who bought the film rights to just his second feature project before “The Help” became a publishing phenom, gets plenty of help from his stellar mostly female cast, particularly the lead trio: Hollywood “it” girl Emma Stone, uproarious breakout star Octavia Spencer and the quietly mighty Viola Davis, a past Oscar dark horse who is now a bona fide Academy Award contender.
In 1963, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Stone) graduates from Ole Miss and returns to her hometown of Jackson, Miss., where the fledgling Civil Rights movement is struggling to make headway against the treacherous, firmly entrenched Jim Crow laws and attitudes. Skeeter is determined to become a serious writer, but New York editor Elain Stein (Mary Steenburgen) won’t hire her until she gains some experience. The only journalism job Skeeter can find, though, is writing a cleaning advice column for the local paper.
Since her own beloved maid, Constantine (Cicely Tyson) left her family’s employ while Skeeter was away at college, the aspiring writer turns to Aibileen Clark (Davis), the maid for her Junior League pal Elizabeth (Ahna O’Reilly), for help with the column.
After wincing over malicious society queen bee Hilly Holbrook’s (Bryce Dallas Howard) callously cruel bridge-lunch crusading for a proposed law that would require all white households to have a separate bathroom for the black help, Skeeter decides she has found an ideal topic for her first book. She persuades Aibileen to share her stories of working for white families — beside cooking and cleaning, the maid has raised 17 white babies, lavishing them with love while their mothers treated her with haughty disdain — for the book.
Skeeter gets a feistier variety of behind-the-scenes stories when Hilly imperiously fires her maid Minny (Spencer), who happens to be Aibileen’s best friend. Minny’s sassy hilarity provides welcome comic relief from Aibileen’s quiet endurance and the seriousness of the subject matter.
Davis earned an Academy Award nomination with her powerful but limited part in 2008’s “Doubt,” and she seems to set to become an Oscar favorite with her nuanced lead turn in “The Help,” her meekly stoic demeanor contrasting with the righteous pain and anger in her eyes.
Others who give top-notch turns in smaller roles include Emmy winner Allison Janney as Skeeter’s peer pressure-prone mother Charlotte, up-and-comer Jessica Chastain as social outcast and Minny’s new employer Celia, and Oscar-winning scene stealer Sissy Spacek as Hilly’s forgetful but still clever mother Mrs. Walters.
While Taylor’s more than 2-hour film occasionally moves slower than cold molasses and in a few spots becomes nearly as sugary, “The Help” still serves as an uplifting reminder of how compassion, courage, empathy and honesty have helped change the world.
— BAM
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Thank you for taking time to write this post. It’s been very valuable. It couldn’t have come at a greater time for me!