The Help (Spoilers!)

With all of the buzz that real critics have generated about The Help, I knew that I eventually had to see it. Also, my girlfriend really wanted to see it, so we rented it and that was the real reason I watched it. Of course, this movie is intended to be Oscar-bait. Based off the 2009 novel of the same name by Kathryn Stockett, it is a fictional account of the lives of black maids and a white reporter who chooses to write a book about their stories.

In a nutshell, the movie's theme is how people can find commonalities in people they never expected to. It's a subject that's been covered over and over again in any movie where racism is a central conflict, but The Help steers away from the normal fold by not having the characters strive to make a dramatic change in the status quo. What makes The Help stand out from other movies that deal with the subject of racism during the Civil Rights movement is that the characters try their very hardest to deal with the situation fairly. Both sides are capable of good and evil, and it makes the characters much more human. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the casting choices were all excellent.

Emma Stone plays Skeeter, an Ole Miss journalism graduate that dreams of being a novelist. Her idea manifests itself as a project compiling the stories, good and bad, of "the help," a term used to categorize the black maids and other domestic workers employed by the middle- and upper-class white community in Jackson, Mississippi. Her main co-conspirators are Abilene (played by Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer), and the movie follows their triumphs and pitfalls as they try to anonymously publish the book while Skeeter and Abilene hide their activities from alpha mean-girl Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Minny learns that there is such a thing as a kind employer from the well-meaning but bumbling Celia (Jessica Chastain).

While the movie's story is charming and the acting is spot-on (Oscar prediction: Emma Stone will be nominated for an Oscar), I kind of liked the movie better when I thought it was based on a true story. Some facets of the stories, including the end, were realistic enough (read: sad) to make you feel like it was realistic, but some of the stories that were told, especially Minny's shit-pie episode, kind of felt like the outcome worked out a little too neatly. It's really nothing especially terrible or unbelievable, but it was something that irked me all the same.

Overall, I think this is a contender for the Best Picture award at the Oscars, and Emma Stone is definitely going to be a contender for Best Leading Actress, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Davis or Spencer (or both) in the running for Best Supporting Actress. I give it 9 out of 10 heart-warming stories.