Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

davreesha When I was in high school, my Speech Teacher/Forensics Team Coach gave me this book to look for monologues. He told me that it was a great read, too! However, I didn't want to read it or find a monologue within it. I let my sister borrow it, and I returned it back to him. My sister loved the book! Then, they made the movie... Boy, I kicked myself for not reading it or finding a monologue.

Leofwine_draca THE HELP is one of those feel-good Hollywood productions that always makes me feel cold inside instead. The sentimentality is overbearing and the shrill performances extremely off-putting to this viewer, with Bryce Dallas Howard and Jessica Chastain making me want to switch off every time while they're on screen. The film seems to have been made to assuage white guilt and looks at the plight of black maids in the American South during the 1960s, where they were regularly bullied and treated as lessers during the civil rights era. Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer give well judged performances but the story feels padded out and lifeless at times; it really didn't need to be two and a half hours long. Emma Stone's grating character gets too much screen time and seems a bit dim while the decent into bad taste humour at one point is something I couldn't forgive or come back from.

Anssi Vartiainen Based on a book of the same name by Kathryn Stockett, The Help talks about mid-century Southern USA and about a young aspiring writer, who decides to write about the eponymous help, the black people who pretty much made sure that everything stayed on course in the white households, from raising the children to checking that the roof was still up. She faces a few problems though. First of all it being extremely unpopular to talk about such a subject and second of all it being somewhat hard to find a black person brave enough to talk against whites.This film was immensely popular in the States, like these films usually are, and I can kind of understand why. It's an uplifting story about a historical wrong that is still relevant even today, featuring an ensemble cast and great technical aspects.And yet, at the same time I'm watching this film and thinking to myself that I don't see the attraction. It might be that I have no touching point to this issue. I'm white, that much is true, but I'm also both Nordic and the son of a farmer. Slavery didn't enter into my worldview until I started watching movies aside from cartoons. And I'm watching this film where white people in the 1960s treat their help like they're cattle. Cattle with leprosy even. And I'm thinking that this is extremely silly and overblown. But for all I know it just might have been exactly like that, which is a chilling thought.The ending is also too saccharine, in my opinion. Flowers rain from the sky, the wicked are punished and a holy choir sings Hallelujah kind of saccharine. But perhaps in America, where this is still a huge problem, that kind of an ending provides the needed emotional catharsis.Like with all these types of films, I don't feel like I'm qualified to judge them. I like the acting a lot, I like the story, I like how it looks and feels. I just find it a bit exaggerated, personally. As well as an hour too long. Still, worth a watch if the premise tickles your fancy.

daughterof_forest88 I wanted to see this film earlier,but the length of it made me postpone it.I was wrong.It was so good.It shows how black people are treated by the white and it is so sincere.I wish people weren't so racists.Although we live in the 21st century,nothing has changed since the ages of caves.Women,black people and weak people are treated really bad.I liked that the author was white but in reality no white would lose his/her friends to defend black people.I liked the cake Bryce Dallas Howard ate.It was so funny.Unfortunately,injustice will always prevail.