Review of The Help (2011) by Jdicksteihn — 04 Sep 2011

The director, Tate Taylor, knows exactly how he wants the audience to feel about every character and every scene. He leaves almost no room for you to make up your own mind and so the deck continually feels stacked. You're not watching reality unfold, you're watching propaganda. Bryce Dallas Howard's character is set up to represent the racist white south. But her character is so devoid of any redeeming qualities that she feels like a straw-woman, and the effect is that the movie says very little other than "bad people are bad". Most insulting to the audience's intelligence, the last 45 minutes of the film consist of 6 or 7 manipulative tear-jerk-er scenes in a row. Complete with swelling "please cry" music, a forced break up scene, a "group standing up and applauding" scene, and a "crying child saying goodbye" scene. No movie cliche' is spared. I think this would be less objectionable in a film about young lovers, or a boy and his dog. But when you are making a movie about "the help" in the south, a minority group whose story has (according to the premise of the movie) not been told, then you owe it to them, I think, to just tell the story and leave out the "tear-jerk-er" play book. So I'd go beyond saying this is a bad movie. It is a socially irresponsible movie that sets itself up to be something it isn't: the story of "the help". Peeking through all the stupid Hollywood tricks is Viola Davis, whose performance suggests to us that underneath this trite movie was a real complicated story to be told, about real people. It is rare that an actor can transcend material like this, and the movie is worth seeing just for that amazing feat.

But besides all this, you know a movie has no interest in reality when the strikingly beautiful Emma Stone, in full makeup and fashionable clothing, is sold as the 23 year old girl who has never been on a date. Change that plot point or change the actress.