The Help

Yeah, this is the kind of politically correct, high-minded Oscar safe bet where pretty much all the black characters can be compared to the greatest philosophers in history thanks to their human (popular) wisdom, but I can’t help it, I really liked it. In its 146 minutes, it has charm, is entertaining, and has good performances, direction and script. It was nice, but at the Oscars I will root for someone else. (12/02/2011)

A must-see feel-good movie about racial issues in upper middle-class USA in the 1960s. Paradoxically, the most black and white is the dosage of emotions, which is sometimes too simplistic and for effect – the vast majority of whites are superficial scumbags and the vast majority of blacks are good and model workers. But if you overlook this creative vice of pigeonholing characters in an otherwise interesting story, you get a number of scenes with a huge range of emotions that can grab you by the heart and move you appropriately. An intense viewing experience, a stimulating Oscar-winning film with a stellar cast and deservedly positive reviews. (11/29/2022)

Almost a full rating. The Help is a film with a very strong story and a premise that has played a significant and unsavoury role in the history of the United States, yet I think it could have been executed in a much stronger and more cinematically imaginative way than Taylor did. It has everything, from brilliant actors to Newman's harmonious music, and great sets, yet it’s somehow dull and for a good part of its 140 minutes it pretends to be a gripping human drama rather than actually being one. I felt a bit as if the director was thinking more about the members of the Academy than the ordinary audience and followed a fixed and very popular template in Hollywood. But on the other hand, it works beautifully, and in tandem with all the wonderful actresses, his efforts to move and impress with the serious premise are almost 100% effective, or at least I was perfectly at home with his narrative after the slower start, when the characters begin to emerge beautifully. Unfortunately, the expected climax was somewhat disappointing, and the rush of classical sentimentality and excessive naive moralising made me groan unhappily. But in spite of its flaws and weaker moments, this was another unforgettable film that can make even lumberjacks cry just by looking at the face of the main character...Too bad. 4.5* (12/20/2012)

Kind in a black and white way and a little too obtrusive female drama that is occasionally ridiculously naive (there are three types of character; a cheerful black lady with a troubled past endowed with common sense, an affected xenophobic, upper-class white lady and men who we don’t see or, when we eventually do, then they invariably run away from their problems). It rides on the harmless, tearjerker wave, but never delves beneath the surface... We only take a look there in the opening scene and that is by far the best moment in the movie. (11/20/2011)

An above-average soap opera that, through a sequence of lightweight episodes (not a single scene fully conveys how serious the situation in the South really was), capitalises on the myth of progressive young people who made the United States a better country in the 1960s. The story with a big heart is stuffed into a hermetically sealed bubble conveying the contemporary socio-political context to the trapped characters only through television and radio. The film refuses to take into account what happened in the real world, just as the white ladies refused to acknowledge their servants’ status as human beings enjoying full rights. The Help is even more consistent in denying the existence of bad, bad things than the similarly simplified Precious, unlike which The Help offers a likable white protagonist for the white audience to identify with. I welcome the effort to make a women’s film, though melodramatic only in moments and not in its overall structure, and I respect the need for a purgative spectacle that turns a humiliating defeat into a proud victory, but to accept the simplification of a serious historical subject into almost family entertainment with all of the ideological perversity concentrated into a single ultra-bitch strikes me as supremely conformist. 55% (01/26/2012)