THE HELP needs no help...

The Help is adapted by Tate Taylor (who also directs) from the wildly popular best-selling novel of the same name by Kathryn Stockett.
The year is 1962 and race relations in Jackson, Miss. (and all of the deep South) are far from ideal. Segregation is the norm, rigidly adhered to by whites, including the Junior League ladies who employ black maids to keep their homes and children in line.
One member, Skeeter (Emma Stone) is appalled by the conduct of her old friends and, being an aspiring writer, decides to undertake the story of that life from the point of view of the maids. It takes extraordinary courage for the maids to come forward to talk to her in secret, even with the promise of anonymity. The first is Aibileen, beautifully portrayed by Viola Davis. Eventually, her best friend Minny (Octavia Spencer, who sparkles in this role) joins her. 

Octavia Spencer (left) and Viola Davis portray longtime friends.

This is a movie that gives a number of women perhaps the juiciest roles of their careers. But it’s not a “woman’s picture.” I talked to a number of men, including my husband, who loved it too.
Funny scenes such as the joke played on Hilly by Skeeter when she is pushed too hard to publish Hilly’s “Home Help Sanitation Initiative” in the League’s newsletter. The initiative is an attempt to require white families to install separate bathrooms for their “colored” help.

Bryce Dallas Howard as Hilly (left) shows her true colors to Emma Stone (Skeeter).

In addition to powerful performances by those three women, and many others including Bryce Dallas Howard as the uber-racist Hilly, Sissy Spacek in a very funny turn as Hilly’s mother, Jessica Chastain as fish-out-of-water Celia Foote, Allison Janney as Skeeter’s mother, Cicely Tyson as Skeeter’s family’s former maid Constantine, Ahna O’Reilly as Elizabeth Leefolt, and the twins Eleanor and Emma Henry as Elizabeth’s adorable toddler, Mae Mobley, who bonds with Aibileen instead of her mother.
Each of these women has some complicated relationships, but the film keeps things straight so there’s little confusion as the many strands of the story play out.
The other star of the movie is the town of Jackson, in all its ‘60s splendor. While the white women’s homes are lovely for their time, they hide their distasteful secrets. The movie keeps us thinking and weighing all the time.
The longish film speeds by, and we reluctantly relinquish our visit with our new friends (primarily Skeeter and the maids). Many scenes, both sad and funny, linger in our memory – the mark of a good movie.
I loved the book, and the essence of it was captured here. As I revisit the book, I see that some things were truncated in the movie to the point you may not fully understand them, but the substance of the book is here.
It’s one of the best movies of 2011 and will surely be prominent come Oscar time.
Three and a half+ reels (out of four) for this lovely film.

Watch this space tomorrow....

When I’ll bring you two reviews on movies you WILL want to see!

30 Minutes or Less

It’s called “30 Minutes or Less.” It could be subtitled “The time it will take you to flee from the theater after the movie starts.”
The premise sounds funny. Unhappy pizza delivery guy Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) delivers to two apes (well, ape-mask wearing idiots played by Danny McBride and Nick Swardson) who have decided to hire a hit man to kill one of their fathers (Fred Ward). The problem: they have no money, especially not $100,000. So why not kidnap someone (Nick), strap a bomb on him, and send him off to rob a bank. When he delivers the money to them, he’ll get the code to shut off the bomb’s timer.
Nick enlists the help of his best friend (Aziz Ansari trapped in a movie unworthy of him) to rob the bank. There’s a stripper and a girl Nick likes (who happens to be his friend’s sister).
What went wrong? Not the bank robbery. Just everything else.
The movie (mercifully short at 1 hour 23 minutes) is a series of cobbled-together scenes, some of which attempt humor (rarely succeeding).
First, I don’t fault Eisenberg or Ansari, or Michael Pena as the hit man. They are pretty good actors, but should choose their vehicles better.
Speaking of vehicles, there are a couple of good car chases in this, but that hardly makes up for the rest of it. Perhaps the funniest scene is the opening one in which Nick gives two bratty kids their comeuppance.
Here’s the thing. I couldn’t concentrate on the plot, or even any “laughs,” because my senses were being constantly bombarded with the F-bomb and all its variations. Every single character in the film uses the terms profusely, every other word. The only time there’s relief from that word, is when they are uttering every other crude word or phrase they can think up, and some that they apparently did think up!
If a normal comedy script is somewhere around 95 pages, and you took out the profane words in this script, it would probably be about 20 pages long. And about that complicated.
Yes, there are a few twists, but not enough to justify the foul-mouthed mess.
Reading some reviews on Rotten Tomatoes (where it scored a low 45%) I couldn’t believe one writer actually said, “rude good fun without excessive raunch.” Huh? How about another writer, who declared, “One of the great disappointments of my cinematic year so far.” More like it.
I’m giving this a reluctant 1 reel (out of 4).