"The Help" is a movie full of expressions that speak louder than words and actors who are better than their material. Maybe because I expected it to be bad and potentially offensive, I found it mild and not offensive but with major tonal problems that caused me to feel very conflicted about what it was I had just seen.
I didn't like Kathryn Stockett's book and the movie essentially repeats the major mistake it makes -- except for one element the book can't replicate, which is really good acting. Emma Stone is really good as Skeeter Phelan, despite being trapped under one of the worst wigs I have ever seen. Octavia Spencer, new to me, as the oft-defiant Minny was terrific. Bryce Dallas Howard as the reigning Southern belle of Skeeter's small town was... well, you hate her, but you're supposed to, so she's doing her job. Aunjanue Ellis (also new to me) makes a memorable Yula Mae. Allison Janney, who I didn't even realize was in this movie, is great in it in a minor role as Skeeter's mother. Mary Steenburgen is in this movie for about 2 minutes total, as a New York book editor who becomes Skeeter's long-distance mentor, and even in that 30 seconds where she is eating lunch in some swank place flanked by two dudes in suits who seem to both be her dates, she's acting her ass off. (Also, you go get it.)
And the best of them all is Oscar nominee Viola Davis* as Aibileen, who just takes up the entire screen. Viola Davis is in fact so good in this movie I began to fantasize about an alternate third-cinema version of it in which Emma Stone's character asks Davis' character for her assistance (...or her help? Thank you, I'll be here all week!) over and over again, with Davis' character perpetually refusing. The plot doesn't go forward, Skeeter doesn't find another solution to her "problem" of wanting to find an interviewee for her book; she just asks over and over, and Aibileen turns her down. Nowhere is she strongest in this movie as when she is putting debutante-with-a-conscience Skeeter Phelan in her place. Of course this is "silly" from a narrative standpoint because without Aibileen's participation, there essentially is no movie, except the one in my head called "Viola Davis Will Not Help," which will be up for the Academy Award for best movie ever made.
But I digress! Writer-director Tate Taylor (who also played the bondsman in "Winter's Bone") seems to have struggled with balancing the comedic and dramatic elements of the story, and the onscreen evidence suggests he ultimately decided that the best way was to wildly alternate between them. In a matter of minutes the audience is swung wildly from shit jokes (literal) to "We could be killed!!!" As I have been saying too often these days: That is a choice! A wildly ineffective choice for message delivery. But a choice!
This didn't occur to me at the time, but Taylor may have opted for this approach because a straight drama about segregation would be too depressing, too "hard to take" in one go. I don't think "The Help" exactly pats the audience on the head and says "Good job, now we're all better"--and at least it's less deadly earnest than the book and its insistence that the book-within-a-book Saves Lives--but neither of these are satisfying treatments.
Filmbook verdict: For that reason I would recommend you skip both the book and the movie. Not that either of them are the worst things going, but go read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and watch that movie instead. I will hand out spoilers to any and all.
*Roxane Gay wrote a great review of "The Help" for The Rumpus this week from a perspective I don't have, that of an African-American woman, and on her blog she continues the discussion saying, "It is unfair that an actress of Viola Davis’ beauty and caliber has such limited artistic choices... Jennifer Aniston played a maid once, in 'Friends With Money, but in every other movie she’s the hot love interest. Viola Davis never gets to be the hot love interest and yes she’s older now but when she was younger, she never had that chance either. Also, she’s only four years older than Aniston and she’s equally beautiful so why shouldn’t she play the wife in 'Bounty Hunter' or the dentist in 'Horrible Bosses'? Why couldn’t she have gotten the Julianne Moore role in 'Crazy. Stupid. Love.'? Those are terrible movies but it would be great for her have the opportunity to turn those scripts down. It would be great for all actors of color to have the same opportunities as their white peers."
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