The HELP

“The HELP” (Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Allison Janney, Sissy Spacek & Cicely Tyson)

According to EW, the one entertainment magazine I read, this is the second greatest film ever made (“Crazy Stupid Love” being the best) It’s a good film – well worth viewing, but I wouldn’t call it an Oscar shoe-in by any means. & the reason for that I won’t reveal in this review because that would be a spoiler. But the ‘big twist’ that becomes the main focus of the second half of the film would never take place - and that fact reduces a lot of the value of the overall film.
As a poignant story about what black people (maids in particular) had to put up with in the Deep South of this country (specifically Jackson, Mississippi) in the late 1950’s & early ‘60’s, it makes a powerful statement on an era that this country should hang its collective head in shame over. Very difficult to watch at times, “The Help” would have been the perfect film to release back in the early
70’s, because the type of people that you come to despise in this film would see just how despicable they were a lot sooner than they will now. But then again,
a—holes like Bryce Dallas Howard’s Hilly & her flock of racists housewives never would have gone to see a film with Negroes in it. And I’m not calling Bryce a nasty name – just her character. It is a testament to her acting that I hated Hilly & wished she’d die.
And that’s what the writer was banking on by creating the ‘pie’ that serves as Hilly’s come-uppance. Problem for me being – she never would have taken more than one bite.
The two stars of this film with very impressive performances are Emma Stone’s ‘Skeeter’ & Viola Davis’ Aibileen. Eugenia, nicknamed Skeeter, wants to be a writer. She takes a job at the local newspaper writing the housekeeping tips column. Problem is, she doesn’t know anything about housekeeping, so she enlists maid Aibileen to provide responses to the letters that come in. Soon Skeeter realizes she has a gold mine in Aibileen and comes up with the idea to write a novel telling the real-life stories of the tribulations black maids in the South were having while caring for their employer’s white children in order to provide a life for their own families. Aibileen has a tragedy in her past that makes her the perfect subject to begin with.
Needing more tales of racial abuse, Skeeter finds an eager participant in Aibileen’s best friend, Minny (Octavia Spencer) Whereas Aibileen is quietly reluctant to spill too much of herself for Skeeter’s project, Minny is a leave no stone unturned gadabout when it comes time for her to reveal all of the incidences where she was treated like an animal by her white bosses.
There is a nice mixture of ‘decent’ white folk & extremely prejudice scumbags in the film; Allison Janney plays Skeeter’s mother, Charlotte – a bigot who comes to regret her discretions. Sissy Spacek, as Hilly’s mother, doesn’t appear to be racially slanted at all, but that could also be due to the fact that she’s a major crackpot. Then Jessica Chastain’s Celia couldn’t be a sweeter person, though somewhat ditzy and overly anxious when dealing with newly hired maid Minny.
Cicely Tyson has a touching cameo as the maid that helped to raise Skeeter.
“Help!” also features 8 new songs by The Beatles, the best being the title song... oh, wait a minute – wrong ‘Help!’. Sorry.
Which reminds me of an error I noticed in the credits – the song “Jackson” is credited as being written by Leiber & Stoller – it was not. It was written by Rogers & Wheeler. Plus, they use the unmusical Cash & Carter version instead of the better Sinatra & Hazelwood cover... Pretty bad when Nancy Sinatra is a better singer than you are.
There have been plenty of ‘mistakes’ dealing with the times that critics have been pointing out – stupid things like the vacuum they used wasn’t invented until 1965 and this film supposedly takes place in the early sixties! The only one that jumped out at me was when Skeeter uses Liquid Paper to ‘white out’ a typographical error. Mrs. Nesmith’s invention may be old hat by today’s standards, but I’m quite certain it wasn’t available to the masses in 1963...
But that’s nitpicking – which I am very good at, but shouldn’t be doing it here. This is a very good film, one you should take your grandparents to see, if they were in their youth during that era. My parents were racists – most of my older relatives were racists. One relative, after I reprimanded them for using the ‘n’ word very derogatorily, used the excuse, “that’s just the way I was brought up.” That’s B.S. – I was brought up that way as well, but then I had a black classmate in the second grade & I realized he’s just like any other kid except for his skin color. Now, it’s time for the older generation to ‘grow up’ – Go see ‘The Help” & feel ashamed if you were one of ‘those’ people that mistreated someone just because their skin was darker than yours.
Lecture over. Wonderful job by everyone involved in this film. Except the secret ingredient would have made Minny's pie inedible... Not that I’ve ever eaten one of Minny’s pies...