The HELP Movie Review

So my beau took me to see The Help last week. I was a laggard when it came to watching the movie everyone was raving about, because I wasn't easily convinced that Hollywood could or would authentically capture the experiences of black women in the Jim Crow era who worked as domestic help. I was ultrasensitive about this topic, because my great grandmother worked as a maid (quite a common thing). However, I was somewhat impressed with the film, but GBU must still rate it:

THE GBU RATING

GOOD..............[.........]...BAD...............................UGLY

It's just okay for me, because it was a cliche, kaleidoscope film, meaning "The Help's" lives were shown through a white lens. The film is largely about a white woman writing a polyvocal narrative about the experiences of black maids. But rarely do we see the maids' lives beyond the employer's home. I would've loved to see how being "The Help" intersected with the other roles these black women took on (i.e. black community members, mothers, wives, etc). We primarily heard about these other roles through the expository dialogue between the black women and Skeeter (the white female character who writes the book). Or a black eye, church scene vignette etc. captured just a glimpse of their character multidimensionality. Perhaps the actually book by Kathryn Stockett provides the dynamism and sensory description I desperately wanted to see in the film. So often I find that there's way more visceral imagery in books than movies. Or perhaps I'm terribly biased, because I'm a writer.