THE HELP: Touching period drama

The high-profile drama The Help offers something a little different for moviegoers this summer. Tears, yes, but also a different kind of cast and setting from all the high-concept adventures and contemporary rom-coms coming at us this summer. Check out these Reel Answers to see if this movie is for you.

The Help
Directed by Tate Taylor
Starring Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia L. Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard

What is The Help about?

The adaptation of the breakout debut novel by Kathryn Stockett follows the book’s plot faithfully. It keeps an intimate focus on young college graduate Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Emma Stone), who comes home to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963 to figure out her future. She’s different from her friends and family, and ends up empathizing with the low-paid black “help” who toil away raising the children and cleaning the houses of the richer white people while remaining a mystery to those people. When Skeeter decides to try to publish the maids’ stories, everyone involved could get in big trouble.

The TV ads for The Help make it look high-spirited and humorous. Is the film a comedy?

The ads are trying to invite people into the film by cherry-picking the more light-hearted moments of the story. While there are plenty there (some reviewers have chastised writer/director Tate Tyler for including certain “silly” scenes in his movie, but they are straight out of the book) the overall tone of this movie is one of simmering outrage and a low-level dread as the maids start stepping out of the shadows to tell their unvarnished stories during a very dangerous era to do so.

How gritty is the depiction of the black maids’ lives?

While this film is rated PG-13, it’s not for on-screen violence or raunchiness. Unpleasant things do happen to folks, including one of our favorite characters, but it happens off-screen. The women’s hard lives are not sugar-coated, but also not wallowed in for shock effect. The rating no doubt is for language, because real s**t does happen in this movie, and there’s no other word for it.

How much civil rights discussion is there in the film?

If you’re afraid you’re in for a lengthy history lesson from this movie, fear not. While set in the south during the early 1960s, its aim isn’t to tell you anything new about Mississippi during the civil rights era. Rather, this is a character-driven soap opera all the way, and luckily it’s driven by two interesting characters, the stoic Aibileen (Viola Davis) and the feisty Minny (Octavia Spencer), both of whom have hidden stories and talents and both whom prove more than a little heroic in their ways.

How are the actors in this film?

Hopefully Viola Davis’s performance won’t be forgotten come Academy Awards time. She really shows you the heart and soul of this intelligent woman who over the years has raised 17 white children while cleaning their homes. And Octavia Spencer brings real complexity to what might have been just a stock comic-relief character. Emma Stone is well cast as Skeeter in terms of her age and look for this role, and is highly likable as usual, but is often secondary to many of the other more vivid characters. There are lots of juicy parts for the large cast of supporting actresses, which includes veterans such as Sissy Spacek, Cicely Tyson and Allison Janney. But Bryce Dallas Howard and Jessica Chastain, playing two beautiful young women from different sides of the tracks, have some of the best moments.

Is there anything in The Help for guys?

If a guy needs to see other guys in a movie to feel comfortable, this one isn’t for him. This is mainly the story of a group of young wives and mothers and their female maids, with a few men showing up for mealtime scenes. But, that said, the power plays and coded dialogue between all the women is just as tense and fascinating as any boardroom intrigue. Overlay that with the sense of a society in turmoil as the characters reel from news about the slaying of local activist Medgar Evers and then John F. Kennedy, and audience members of any gender should be engaged. And if that doesn’t work, there are some shiny vintage convertibles and trucks to feast your eyes on.

What’s good about The Help?

Lovers of the book should be well satisfied with this adaptation (with the caveat that the book is always better than the movie). Also, there are nice touches of authenticity throughout. The movie was filmed in steamy Mississippi and you can feel the bright sun and heat radiating throughout the scenes. The hairdos, the clothes, the bridge parties, the small-town fundraisers, the Crisco-fried chicken and the stately homes that the help keep clean all pay note-perfect homage to the early 1960s. Finally, the movie packs a quietly emotional wallop at the end.

What’s not good about The Help?

Some reviewers have criticized the movie for pulling its punches about the real story of race relations in the Jim Crow South, skimming the surface of troubling behavior by aiming to entertain rather than uncover new ground. And the character of Minny has been described as cartoonish at times. All that is true—and true to the book. If you’re looking for postmodern social realism à la Precious or even Mad Men there isn’t a lot of it here. But for me the biggest drawback was the southern dialect, which was sometimes much harder to decipher (and even hear) than it needed to be.

Will I need tissues?

Most definitely.

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My Reel Answers column aims to boil down film reviewing to its essence: answering questions (without divulging key plot points) you might have about a popular movie before plunking down your hard-earned money to see it.

Please visit http://reelanswers.net to see past movies and DVDs I’ve reviewed, and let me know what questions you have about upcoming movies that I can answer.

When not watching and reviewing movies, I run a consulting business helping successful book authors ramp up their online presence via websites, ebooks, and social media at http://laura-e-kelly.com.         —Laura