Ladies, Welcome to NASA

Rating: 8/10 (16 June 2017)

"Hidden Figures" is the NASA version of "The Help," in which a bunch of white moviegoers watch a palatable civil rights tale with a happy ending and then get to congratulate themselves for being so open- minded about watching a movie about black people in the first place.
Actually, "Hidden Figures" is a much better movie than "The Help," and it tries much harder to create three dimensional characters rather than the cartoonish caricatures that populated the other film. Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monae, and Octavia Spencer are the three ladies at the film's center, black women who had to fight tooth and nail to get themselves taken seriously at NASA, while Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, and Jim Parsons get the thankless roles of playing the characters who represent WHITE PEOPLE and their varying degrees of racist bullsh*t. Though it isn't exactly subtle, it could have hit its emotional buttons much harder than it does, and it's a quite enjoyable film.
Lost the 2016 Best Picture Oscar to "Moonlight," which is as it should have been.
Grade: A-