Kernel Rating (out of 5): 
Length: 105 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Age Appropriate for: 12+. The MPAA rating is for ‘thematic material.’ Younger kids, depending on their knowledge of racism and the civil rights movement, may be confused- it certainly isn’t a movie made for kids.
by Mary McCarthy, Editor
I didn’t take a lot of notes during The Help. This is the best indicator (to me, anyway) that it’s a good film. I’m too busy watching it to write down little things to talk about in a movie review.
Yes, I’ve read the novel by Kathryn Stockett. I loved it and stayed up late because I couldn’t stop turning the pages. I was annoyed when USA Today justifiably chose it as their Book of the Year but the New York Times gave it the snub in their annual best books list. So I was eager to see the movie, although I went in with the same it-will-never-be-as-good-as-the-book syndrome I had when I saw Water for Elephants.
If you haven’t read the book, the plot is summarized as follows: 1960s Mississippi is a racially turbulent area when Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan returns from college with aspirations to be a writer instead of a wife. She asks her friend Elizabeth Leefolt (played unmemorably by Ahna O’Reilly) if she can interview Elizabeth’s maid Aibileen to learn tips for a housekeeping column she’s scored at the local newspaper. Skeeter then decides she wants to author a tell-all on black southern maids (the ‘help’) and their treatment by white southern women, including her own friends. Needless to say, the maids are at first reluctant to tell their stories, but ultimately new friendships are formed and the waves of changing times in America on the tide of the civil rights movement are thematically ridden.
Director/Writer Tate Taylor (in what is practically a directorial debut, if you don’t count 2008’s “Pretty Ugly People”) has well translated a complex, emotional story to the big screen. The 1960s setting and costuming are painstakingly detailed, and he has put together at least a very talented supporting cast.
Mary Steenburgen is great in a small role as Skeeter’s New York editor. Cicely Tyson is fabulous in a tiny role as Constantine Jefferson. Allison Janney is excellent as Charlotte Phelan, the mother of Eugenia (“Skeeter”- more on her later.) Sissy Spacek is eccentrically perfect as Hilly’s mother. Hilly is played villainously, cringingly well by Bryce Dallas Howard in her most major film role to date. Howard truly brings the fictional character to life. Ditto: fellow Hollywood newcomer Jessica Chastain as Celia Foote. It’s amazing to see an actor portray a character in a film in exactly the way you imagined her in the book; all of the above-mentioned actors do this.
Then, there are some who don’t.
Emma Stone, disappointingly, is just not great as Skeeter. I guess her experiences playing roles in “The House Bunny” and “Superbad” didn’t give her enough of an ability to pack a punch in this leading role, and she spends most of the film with a befuddled ‘deer in the headlights’ look (as though she is surprised to have landed the part)- only managing to squeeze out two tears (when she discovers her childhood maid Constantine has died) despite many other opportunities for emotional depth.
Forget Stone, though, because WHY you are going to go see and love this movie is for two reasons and two reasons only. Because Octavia Spencer is pitch perfect as Minny Jackson and Viola Davis is beyond magnificent as Aibileen Clark. I remember Davis from a tiny role as Mrs. Miller in Doubt, but she has hit her cinematic stride as the wise, emotionally rich character around which the film’s plot revolves. If both of these women don’t get Oscar nods for their performances, I will be shocked. Stone’s acting weakness essentially only serves to highlight Davis’ talent, though it’s a shame the complex, deep strength of the Skeeter character in the novel is lost in mediocre translation.
Is it icky that this is a story about the racial experiences of black people written by a white woman who was sued by her brother’s own black maid (named Abileen)? Heck yes. I’d love the book and the movie better if they’d been written by an African American based on his or her own family’s experiences. But if you can get past the ickiness factor, at least we’re having the conversation as a result of what really is a powerful book- and a movie you shouldn’t miss.
