The Help movie reviews
This week's featured adptation is "The Help," a staple of book clubs everywhere, and the reviews are very good. Kathryn Stockett's book was a real tear-jerker, if my household is any measure, and I bet the movie is rated at least three hankies. Here are exceprts from some reviews:
-- Tribune: [Viola] Davis is reason No. 1 the film extracted from Kathryn Stockett's 2009 best-seller improves on its source material. You can talk all you want about how a movie begins and ends with the screenwriter(s), or lives and dies on a director's ability to use the camera as more than a recording device. But some film adaptations owe their success primarily to the rightness of the casting. "The Help" is one of them."
-- New York Times: If the movie’s director, Tate Taylor, had his way, your tear ducts would be sucked dry by that big finish, emptied out by a pileup of calamities that include a painful romantic breakup, the devastations of cancer and the mighty wailing of an emotionally abandoned toddler.
-- Los Angeles Times: "The Help" is a delicious peppery stew of home-cooked, 1960s Southern-style racism that serves up a soulful dish of what ails us and what heals us. Laughter, which is ladled on thick as gravy, proves to be the secret ingredient — turning what should be a feel-bad movie about those troubled times into a heart-warming surprise.
Comments
I thought they did a fabulous job of adapting this to the big screen. I predict the theaters will be full for a while with this movie!
Posted by: bermudaonion(Kathy) | August 11, 2011 8:19 AM
I look forward to seeing The Help. The Washington Post review was a whiny, I diiiidn't liiiiike it....." (I think the WaPo movie "critic" needs to get a real job.)
Posted by: Eve | August 11, 2011 9:00 AM
I saw the moie last night with family and I loved it. I cried and laughed and am wantign to go back to see it again. 2 thumbs way up.
Posted by: Lady Dee | August 11, 2011 2:26 PM
Having grown up white in the south with black maids- I am looking for ward to this- can't agree w the previous commenter re Ann Hornaday's somewhat snarky review- I liked the review because I am more interested in literature about changing society than that about the way it is- we know how it is- as some one who was arrested for civil rights issues- I imagine I will find it ludicrous, but I am willing to keep an open mind and I don't mind good character studies. If the author appends a paragraph or two describing where we have to go from here to improve race relations? Fine- otherwise- like so many authors- she is capitalizing on oppression. A novel like this written by a lack woman- it would not find a publisher!
Posted by: david eberhardt | August 11, 2011 2:47 PM
I loved the film, and I really thought it tackled important issues without being preachy, and was faithful to the book without being slavishly so. Here's my review: http://eatwithjoy.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/film-review-the-help-and-the-supper-of-the-lamb/
Posted by: Rachel Stone | August 15, 2011 8:29 AM
The negative response(s) are atypical to the same mentality that the book speaks of, those who are ignorant of the hatred they hold, ignorant of the world around them, and mostly, ignorant of the words the book has between the covers-the place they dare not look for fear they might have a feeling of guilt for their own bias...
The book was a page turner, hard to put down. I look forward to seeing this movie the day it comes out.
Posted by: freemoviesonlinelist.com | August 18, 2011 12:17 AM
Please check out this GREAT video on fashion in "The Help" TODAYS LOOK - http://andrewmukamal.com/todayslook/todays-look-episode-37-fashion-in-film-the-help
Posted by: Seinfeldted | September 20, 2011 1:56 AM