Wednesday, April 17, 2013

The Help (2012)

An engaging, too good-to-be-true, movie about racial attitudes to black maids in Mississippi in the 1960s.
Very watchable, and some lovely performances, particularly from the two main black characters,  Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minnie (Octavia Spencer),  the white ultra-racist, Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) , and the white-trash Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain). Skeeter (Emma Stone) is a young writer who initiates the plot.  She  persuades the black maids to  tell their side of the story. From this slightly improbably, but inspiring premise flows the comedy and the seriousness of the film.
In the end I found it a bit lightweight.