The Help

3.5/5

I liked The Help. I really did. All of the performances were great, Emma Stone held her character extremely well even if it did seem like she was overacting once or twice, the racist acts and acts of cruelty were real and were present, and the script was strong, interesting, and at some points extremely funny. I gave it 3.5 though so I would like it on facebook, in reality it's between a 3 and a 3.5. My issue, and it's a big issue for a movie like this, is that the tone and movement of the film with the script never outright lead to me feeling inspired or driven to cheer or even help the characters solve their problems. If we look at other great movies that deal with racism (the first in my head are American History X, The Green Mile, Stand and Deliver, and perhaps even Hairspray to some extent), we have a distinct push to either cheer extremely loudly for justice to prevail, or we feel a strong desire to help the characters attain their goal. In The Help, it becomes more of a strong desire to see justice carried out, but never really being told or shown how the book will reach the public, never really seeing what the book does for civil rights as much as it does for Skeeter's career, and because there's never any real demonstrated threat to the book, there's never any doubt in my mind that it'll be finished. So for that, some of the emotional tension to it was missing. But it was still a good movie, Viola Davis deserves an Oscar nomination, and I'm sure plenty of people will leave hte movie and feel very strongly about it being a truly great movie. I just felt a bit let down.