It has been awhile since I saw a movie released that pressed the racism button. I believe Crash was the last major release that bothered to. The Help takes place in 1960′s Mississippi, just before the civil rights movement, and this essentially meant that I spent two hours in the theater mad at white people. It is a rather artistically shot film, taking a few colorful strokes from the fantastic O’ Brother, Where Art Thou? It is a well acted movie, that sadly too often tends slip its characters into archetypal roles when it is apparent that the film is going for a more grounded approach. The movie is based on the 2009 best selling novel by Kathryn Stockett. The book is loved by many and hated by a few that had trouble getting over its flaws; flaws which in a certain frame of mind could be seen as racist…. apparently. Stockett’s story comes from being raised by an African American domestic worker much in the way the children in the book and the movie are. It all comes from a place of love, but this first time writer had a problem with phonetics that the movie appears to have cured.

Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer make this movie good, and I hope to see some Academy nods.

The film is directed by Stockett’s good friend, Tate Taylor, who is also new to the art he represents here. Having had only one real movie to his credit before this, his inexperience shows at times. He does a brilliant job bringing this heart wrenching story to life and, while the film suffers from a few missteps, it is never boring. The opening moments with Viola Davis’ Aibileen Clark explaining her discontent with raising white children while having to neglect her own is a potent start to a film that encapsulates quite a few characters and subplots. Aibileen is a part of a cycle of black maids that are doing it because there is not much else out there for them, and are following their Mothers’ footsteps. Viola Davis’ captures the character with such finesse that Aibileen becomes the central point to everything good about this film. With her calm soulful way of talking and the bubbling emotion that just barely surfaces at the most sincere of times, she brings a heart to The Help that wold have been a poor construction without her.

Bryce Howard plays the source of all white guilt as Hilly Holbrook.

Aibileen’s best friend, Minni (Octavia Spencer), serves as the more boisterous domestic servant and, while forceful and entertaining with her character, she does often serve to perpetrate some stereotypes the movie acts to squash. Her attitude has gotten her fired from a few jobs, and in her current place of work under the devilish queen bee of white Mississippi, Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard), she hits a point that nearly ruins her chances at ever finding work again. Hilly Holbrook is an ever smiling southern belle and is the leading force of the married young Mother’s in rich white suburbia. She is host to many a gathering and can easily throw a benefit for black youth while simultaneously trying to push a bill forward that forces every home to have a separate bathroom for their black  workers. She feels that black people and white people share different diseases and should be separated for each others’ health. She even goes as far as to put pencil marks on her toilet paper back home so as to keep Minni from using her bathroom. When Minni is caught using the bathroom, she is fired on the spot and Hilly claims it was because she was a thief and acts to make sure she never gets a job working as a maid again.

Emma Stone is the reason I wanted to see this movie, I was blown away by the fact that she was not the one I walked away loving the most.

It is these sorts of actions that help drive the vehicle behind the heart of the film, Eugenia ‘Skeeter’ Phelan (Emma Stone), start her writing project that will allow these mistreated black women to tell their tale of the experiences they have had. Skeeter is a college graduate with dreams of making it as a writer. She was also raised by a black maid, much like many of the children in Jackson, and when she returns home to find that the saintly Constantine (Cicely Tyson) has left, she is visibly upset. Skeeter’s sickly Mother (Allison Janney) claims Constantine had left on her own, but Skeeter knows better, and having felt loved and cared for by a black maid she feels for those that continue the profession in Jackson, Miss. This all leads to her wanting to eventually interview the maids in town about their true lives and opinions on doing what they do. This is a dangerous project however, since  it exposes the town for the bigot filled state of suburbia that it is, but also because of what these people could do if they found out such a scandalous book was being written. It all has to be done in secrecy and it does take some time to convince other black maids to come out and tell their story.

The blonde on the left is the perfect partner for Minni on the right, as they are both hilarious for different reasons.

Beyond anything else, The Help is an actors film and it is wonderfully acted. Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer steal the show, and the scenes with them together are when the movie is at its best. Even though there are a few stumbles in the character of Minni, she comes off far more colorful and layered then many of the others in the film. The devious Hilly and her one note cohorts serve to give fuel to the maids that come to tell their story, but do little else to separate themselves from the archetypes which they portray. Outside of the ditsy and social outcast who is Minni’s later employer, Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain), and the warmhearted and ambitious Skeeter, the other characters are fairly one note. Without Davis and Spencer on screen, the new director shows his weaknesses. He fails to give the other characters enough personality to be interesting, and that is toobad, since the movie, when at its best, is quite possibly the most fulfilling film I’ve seen this year.

Emma Stone's Skeeter being surrounded by the Real Housewives of Mississippi. It is the new super racist version of the other Housewives shows.

IN CONCLUSION:

I am certain many will look at The Help fondly, and it has done amazingly at the box office thus far. After a Summer without much substance, I’m sure audiences have been hungry for a movie with some weight. The Help does achieve weight, but it is a far cry from what it wants to be. When it works, though, it really works, and Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer put their heart in their characters. These two women play with such feeling and depth that is impossible to dislike the film thanks to them. Emma Stone as always is brilliant, but she takes a backseat to those for whom she is writing the story, and it perfectly suits what her character’s purpose is. While this isn’t going to be a classic like To Kill A Mocking Bird or as poignant as Crash, it is a fine film that is never boring. It is a dose of weightiness that this summer has been missing, and at its best is brilliant and tear jerking. At its core, though, it is a movie of emotional manipulation with a supporting cast that flounders on its own.

RATING:

3.5/5 I enjoyed myself throughout, but I can't help but feel that it could have been better in the portions of the movie without its lead two African American actresses.

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