Well the Oscars are not that far away, and now I have finally seen The Help. I was just lucky enough that my dad got it from Redbox last week. So let's take a look at another Best Picture nomination.
Plot: Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged maid who has spent her whole life raising white children for their parents while her only son died years ago. Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently graduated from college and has gotten a job as a columnist at a local newspaper. She has also recently found out that her maid, Constantine, has mysteriously quit her job to her family without even writing to Skeeter. Skeeter notices how the maids have been given a terrible attitude from their employees to the point of one of her friends, Holly Holbrook forming a bill that gives the black maids separate bathrooms because "they carry different diseases". So Skeeter asks Aibileen and eventually an outspoken maid named Minny Jackson to secretly answer questions about their lives and what they are going through with how they are being treated.
Now even though we've seen plenty of movies like this already over this particular concept about the racism that was happening in the most foul ways in the past, that doesn't make this movie any less good. It gave us a particular world that we most likely haven't looked at before film wise when it comes to that concept that has given us characters to love or really hate with all your heart, some crazy moments, some suspenseful moments, and some very powerful and at some points super, super sad moments all from an excellent cast.
Actors/Characters:
Emma Stone/Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan: Well it's probably not a secret anymore that I've become a fan of Emma Stone when it comes to a lot of the work I've seen her do nowadays. And this film was no exception. I mean good grief, all she had to do was just be there and have the main white character with the much more caring heart and not-focused-on-getting-married-ASAP attitude and already I liked her. But even then she did an excellent job in both the good and the bad moments that happen to the character.
Viola Davis/Aibileen Clark: I really liked her character. She gave a lot of love and caring to the white kids she raised along with the one she was currently raising. She showed a lovable character all around.
Octavia Spencer/Minny Jackson: Yeah she was a fun character. You knew she wasn't much of a woman to mess with even before *WARING SPOILER* you find out what she did.
Bryce Dallas Howard/Holly Holbrook: FINALLY SHE'S A MAIN CHARACTER AGAIN!!!! I know a lot of you have never read a lot of my earlier reviews, but most of them pointed out how - while I'm not a big fan of the actress and I don't see everything she's in - She seemed to only be in a lot of half major half minor roles. I mean she was Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man 3 (which neither her nore the character at a right to be in.) She was Kate Connor in Terminator Salvation and she was Victoria in Twilight Saga: Eclipse. in all three of those films, they were kinda major yet really minor roles. So to me it's nice to see her in something recent that not around that category. But anyway, yes she did a good job too with being someone to hate and make fun of.
Music: I liked the music. I thought it worked very well with the time period.
Editing: I enjoyed the editing. I loved...yet really HATED what they did with the editing in the end because *WARNING SPOILER* when Aibileen gets fired, she has to walk out of the house while the child she was raising who called her, her "real mom" earlier in the film was crying her heart out that she's leaving and it's all back and forth, Aibileen walking away and the girl watching her going. I hated that because as the girl is looking out the window, she starts out just crying but at the last shot she kind of looks like shes like "okay I'm done" as if she's probably about to move on already from Aibileen like she already pointed out to a lot of the white kids she raised before. That works very well to prove the point about that time so well and yet i hate it with all my heart cause it makes me get all " DOES THE KID MOVE ON!?!?! AM I ACTUALLY WRONG!?!?! WHAT THE FRICK HAPPENS!?!?!?!"
And that's my review of The Help if a fun yet powerful film about the hardship from that time period that works so well that I find The Help to be one of the stronger movies of the Best Picture category of this year.
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