The Help (2011) - Review

If you want to watch a film about racism, I do not recommend this one. While it may do a few things right, it suffers from numerous flaws. I didn't really care for this film that much, and it could have been a lot better.

A young woman named Skeeter who is trying to become an author during the civil rights movement of the 60's decides to write a book detailing the lives of African-American maids and how they're treated. As the word about her book gets out, many more African-American maids come to her to help her write her book by telling her how they are treated.

The first issue I have with this film is that it's overly emotionally manipulative. At some points in the movie, it feels like director Tate Taylor is grasping for straws to find anything which might draw an emotion out of the audience. This can be distracting at some points in the film because it's used a lot. In this case, however, I found most of its attempts to be ineffective at giving me a connection with the characters. The only one which was effective for me was the one used at the very end of the film. However, none of the other sad scenes in the film worked. I find this flaw a lot with feel good movies, and I wish that directors would try to avoid this as this is one of the main things which can bring me out of a movie.

Another flaw is that most of the characters are overly cliché and are caricatures. The characters seem to be everything you would expect to find in a film about racism. They make almost every white character to be a racist. Also, they make it so one progressive white character is able to see through the conflict and want to help the African-Americans maids in the film. Also, some of the black characters are very stereotypical and somewhat racist. The film makes it so that almost every black character loves fried chicken. In fact, they show this several points in the film. I really wished that they didn't do it because I found that to be kind of jarring. Since about all of the main characters felt reductive, it sort of took me out of the film.

Another area the film misses in is that it doesn't show the absolute lows of racism. It doesn't need to be hyper-violent, but it should at least have enough violence to make it hit hard enough with the viewer. Since it doesn't show enough violence to give it an accurate portrayal of how life really was like for African-Americans in the 60's, I felt like the movie was too safe. A movie about racism being too safe is never a good thing. There are some movie plots and settings that I feel require for their movies to focus on the absolute lows of their setting. Racism is definitely one of them.

Also, the main character, Skeeter, feels very anachronistic. It feels like Kathryn Stocket (the author of the book this film is based on) projected her own modern-day fulfillment to have such a progressive minded, white female. If someone like Skeeter wanted to write a book about interviews from African Americans from the 60's, those kinds of people usually came from the North and even then, they would be treated with violence. However, to have that character come from the South and write a book like that - it's simply wish fulfillment on Stocket's part. No book like "The Help" would have ever existed and it would've never been published during the 60's. Because of this, the atmospheric feeling of institutional racism does not feel very realistic in the film.

Another flaw is the movie's overall length. I feel like the movie could've been a lot shorter. I'll even argue that it could've been cut down to just under 2 hours. Since it was relatively slow-paced, there were several times when the film didn't have my full attention and other times when I wanted it to end or get going with its main story. One of the plot points which could have been cut from the film was Skeeter's relationship with Stuart. I didn't buy for a second that Skeeter would've been attracted to him and would've gone out with him for quite some time. Wouldn't she have concluded from the beginning that he was a racist and not want to have anything to do with him?

With that being said, that's not to say that I liked nothing about this film. To me, its biggest strength lies in the acting. Many actresses give amazing performances. Emma Stone, Viola Davis, and Octavia Spencer both give amazing performances and they helped to carry the movie very well. However, some performances weren't that good. Bryce Dallas Howard gave an overall good performance, but there were some times when she sounded over-the-top. Also, Jessica Chastain wasn't able to act convincingly as a drunk without sounding annoying and cringeworthy. It had weak performances, but most of them were overall solid.

Also, the film does a good job at reminding us that the African-Americans who wrote the book had to face not only threats of violence from the hateful backlash of angry whites in their hometown, but also a multiplicity of indignities in their hometowns, including being forced to sit at the back of buses and having to use separate restrooms.

In conclusion, while this film does a few things right, it is weighed down by being overly emotionally manipulative, using several cliché caricatures, not hitting the lows of racism well enough, an anachronistic plot, and the slow-pacing. Of course, the majority of its acting and how it displays hardships that African-Americans faced are good, but that's really all I can say for this film. It could've been great, but it didn't do that much for me.

Final Verdict: 3/10 Awful