"The Help": Don't confuse it with the Beatles movie!

Movie Review:

"The Help" (2011, dir. Tate Taylor)

It’s become a tradition over the last few years for studios to counterprogram big budget action films in the dwindling days of summer with adaptations of books your mom probably likes (2009’s “Julie and Julia,” 2010’s “Eat Pray Love”).

This year, we get “The Help,” an adaptation of Kathryn Stackett’s bestseller about the plight of African-American maids in early 1960’s Jackson, Mississippi and the progressive white writer who helps tell their stories.

Directed and adapted by Stackett’s friend, first time director Tate Taylor, “The Help” is a fairly glossy Hollywood drama full of underwritten characters and a flabby plot. While some of the performances are quite solid, “The Help” is fundamentally too shallow.

The film is told from the point of view and infrequent voiceover of Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis), a middle aged maid who has raised numerous white children while suffering institutionalized discrimination. Reeling from the death of her adult son, Aibileen is caring for the neglected toddler daughter of the meek, depressed housewife Elizabeth (Ahna O’Reilly). Things start to change when recent college graduate Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone), an aspiring journalist from a well-heeled family, approaches Aibileen for help with a household cleaning column she’s been hired to write. This innocuous request turns into something more when the Skeeter asks for stories on life as a black domestic for a book. As the project takes off, Aibileen’s best friend Minny (Octavia Jackson) joins, recounting some of her own experiences as a maid. The women are acutely aware they are placing not only their livelihoods, but their lives at risk by telling their stories.

Skeeter is between two worlds, longing for a career while remaining part of an upper class social circle of racist Southern belles. Among these is the film’s main antagonist, Skeeter’s friend and Minny’s former employer, Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard), a villain so broad she needs a mustache to twirl. Hilly also serves as one of the film’s main sources of comedy as she endures the indignity of having toilets placed on her lawn and eats a shit-laced revenge pie (not kidding, I have also trademarked this phrase for future endeavors). The capable Howard thankfully plays the character with a minimum amount of scenery chewing.

There is no dearth of great actresses in this cast. Jessica Chastain, luminous as the mother in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” is a welcome presence, even if she’s playing the underwritten role of Celia Foote, a clueless but gentle housewife shunned by Hilly’s crew. Spencer, who played such roles as Women in Elevator in “Being John Malkovich” and Bank Coworker #1 in “Drag Me to Hell,” delivers a breakout performance as a character who finds moments of levity in some horrific situations. Her scenes with Chastain and Davis are easily some of the film’s highpoints. She’s clearly a versatile performer and hopefully this leads to some better roles.

The film's greatest asset is Davis’ heartbreaking performance. It truly deserves a better movie. Unlike many of “The Help’s” characters, Aibileen never feels broadly drawn and this is due to Davis’ immense skill. Her portrayal feels as natural and lived-in as any I’ve seen in a recent studio movie. Stone, ostensibly the co-lead, doesn’t necessarily deliver a bad performance, but her character is so flat and relatively uninteresting that it’s irritating when the story focuses on her and not Davis.

At 146 minutes, “The Help” meanders almost from the very beginning and flat out drags once it enters its third hour. While tightening things up by ditching some characters and subplots wouldn’t have solved all of the film’s problems, it would have at helped.

One of the main controversies surrounding “The Help” is the question of whether a story of black oppression during such a shameful, recent period in history should rightfully be told by white filmmakers while black writers and directors remain so marginalized by the industry. Additionally, many critics have derided the film as reinforcing the trope of the white savior.

“The Help” may not be willfully trying to reinforce stereotypes but it’s definitely ignorant. It has a tendency to shift to the less affecting exploits of its white characters. Sadly, I think this is a consequence of the idea that white filmgoers are reluctant to see a film about the black experience unless it’s told largely through the eyes of a white character. This signals a problem, not only in studio filmmaking, but in our culture.

While I’d like to say any piece of mass entertainment that brings up hard issues our society only reluctantly discusses deserves to exist, “The Help” botches its handling of those ideas so severely that it doesn't provide anything to the conversation.

Marc’s Grade: C-