The Help was released over the weekend and enjoyed a respectable box office take. This left me in a bit of a quandary because I love the traffic that comes from reviewing a newly released movie, but…I have no intention whatsoever of watching The Help. After all, even if it is mildly entertaining, the premise (Emma Stone’s white ass writes a book about the lives of two black maids she knows in the South circa 1960) lets you know where the entire movie is heading from the get-go. So why, if the film is so predictable, waste my time or money viewing it? I mean, here’s a random still I found by Googling “The Help movie.” I’m going to caption it without having a goddamn clue what is going on and you won’t even know the difference.
See?! The white broads are playing cards or drinking or who the hell knows, and the black maid is feeling excluded from their world. You don’t have to be a rocket surgeon to decipher this crap. Here’s another one:
It practically writes itself, people. And so, I present to you, with only the assistance of The Help‘s brief Wikipedia entry and a Google image search, my review of the film.
Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Emma Stone) moves back home after graduating from college to learn that her beloved childhood maid is nowhere to be found. I’m guessing this irks her, because we wouldn’t have a movie otherwise. Skeeter was probably close with the maid, too. I’ll bet she was closer with the maid than she was her own mother, and her mom was probably a passive-aggressive twat about it and sacked the maid as soon as Skeeter left. There, movie over. Wait, according to the Wiki, there’s more.
Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) is a maid who spent her entire life watching white kids and just lost her only son. Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer) is a maid who sasses her employers and gets fired a shit-ton for it, but keeps getting rehired because she’s an excellent baker.
Let’s see…Aibileen is going serve as this sappy crapfest’s emotional center. Her and Skeeters’ feelings of loss will transcend racial boundaries and allow them to forge a deep understanding and mutual respect. Minny’s background story sounds even more contrived: Didn’t a single cross word to a pale face get you “accidentally” kicked down one of those lovely, spiraling Southern staircases back then? Maybe it is somehow handled in a semi-plausible manner. After all, if I were an old Southern dude who employed a black maid with a big yap but excellent cooking skills, I’d put up with everything short of getting Nat Turner’d in my sleep. Minny’s bosses are probably portrayed as pompous dolts and she tells them “what they need to hear.” God forbid they be permitted a shred of humanity! That might confuse us!
The writing of Skeeter’s book no doubt causes a lot of tension with her family members, whose old guard attitudes clash with her newfound perspective and insight into the humanity of a caste they take for granted. Maybe it costs her a bigoted love interest, too, but then she meets a more liberal guy and all is well again. I’m sure the family comes around eventually and everyone is a little wiser for the journey.
I really don’t know why anyone would go see The Help given how predictable and maudlin it looks. Maybe if you’re a black dude dating a white chick and you want to guilt her into anal after the movie, but that’s a desperate gambit. Even a Jewish guy taking his German girlfriend to Schindler’s List probably isn’t pulling off that stunt. So yeah, just avoid The Help.
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