‘The Help’ a warmly winning tale of female friendship
In Jackson, Mississippi in 1963, (left to right) Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone), Minnie Jackson (Octavia Spencer) and Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) in "The Help," based on the New York Times best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett. Ph: Dale Robinette/DreamWorks II
Emma Stone (left) stars as Skeeter Phelan and Viola Davis stars as Aibileen Clark in "The Help," based on the New York Times best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett. Ph: Dale Robinette/DreamWorks II
Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) overhears the exchange between Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone, center) and her friends in "The Help," based on the New York Times best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett. Photo by DreamWorks II
Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis, standing) attends to the needs of Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard, seated center) and her friends Elizabeth Leefolt (Ahna O'Reilly, left) and Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone, right) in "The Help," based on the New York Times best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett. Ph: Dale Robinette/DreamWorks II
Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer, left) shares a laugh with her best friend Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis, right), in "The Help," based on the New York Times best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett. Ph: Dale Robinette/DreamWorks II
Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone), an aspiring writer, in "The Help," based on the New York Times best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett. Ph: Dale Robinette/DreamWorks II
In Jackson, Mississippi in 1963, Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis, left) and Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer) in "The Help," based on the New York Times best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett. Ph: Dale Robinette/DreamWorks II
Hollywood, with its frenzied pursuit of men, teenage boys and kids, relies almost exclusively on romantic comedies and adaptations of the works of Jane Austen and Stephenie Meyer to satisfy the moviegoing needs of women.
So it’s particularly refreshing to report that “The Help,” an unapologetically non-romantic drama about women, female friendships and the courage to do the right thing, is heartfelt, generally levelheaded and brightly entertaining, with nary a glimpse of a shirtless teen wolf or scornful British gentleman, and barely a moment’s fretful consideration of what thoughts might be percolating inside the thick head of some handsome lug.
Adapted from the best-selling novel of the same title by Kathryn Stockett, “The Help” plunges viewers into racially discordant Jackson, Miss., of the 1960s. The story is focused on two black maids, Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson, and the unexpected bond that develops between them and a recent college graduate, lively redhead Skeeter Phelan.
Skeeter has big ideas about becoming an author, and eventually gets coached by a New York publishing maven into writing a sort of roman a clef that captures the Jackson social scene from the point of view of “the help,” or the city’s black housemaids. Aibileen and Minny are initially reluctant to risk their tenuous livelihood, which depends almost wholly on maintaining the good graces of their wealthy white employers, by telling tales to Skeeter.
Each woman finds her reasons to speak up eventually, however, and because it’s the heart of the Civil Rights era and revolution is in the air, their ranks are eventually joined by a couple of dozen of their peers. The times, as Bob Dylan famously phrased it (and as Skeeter transformatively hears it in a scene from the book left out of the movie), they are a-changin’.
Stockett’s novel has plotlines aplenty that are tied to each of its main characters, and writer and director Tate Taylor at times runs himself a bit ragged trying to keep track of them all. It’s a point of emphasis, for example, that children of privilege in Jackson are raised by their families’ maids far more than by their parents, with ramifications that are touching on some counts and tragic on others.
That drives an important subplot involving Skeeter’s connection to Constantine, her family’s maid and her own beloved surrogate mother. It’s a meaningful part of the story, but there are so many other subplots and characters given equal weight, that the various revelations and resolutions that pertain to Skeeter and Constantine lose some clarity and emotional heft by being chopped up and jumbled amid everything else.
You can make a great tossed salad that way, but it’s a less effective approach to filmmaking.
On the other hand, Taylor works well with his sprawling cast. Viola Davis as steady Aibileen and Octavia Spencer as volatile Minny are excellent, with Davis continually grounding the movie while Spencer launches its most inflammatory flights of fancy, including the deftly handled revelation of Minny’s most defiant act, the aptly name “Terrible Awful.”
Emma Stone, as Skeeter, is also warmly convincing, while Jessica Chastain winningly walks a tricky line as spurned “white trash” socialite Celia Foote. One of the movie’s most delightful outcomes is the convergence of the arcs followed by Celia and Minny, with Spencer and Chastain creating a genuinely warmhearted friendship in what feels like a niche carved out for a cliche.
There are moments where the story invites cliches and then indulges them. Bryce Dallas Howard is appropriately repulsive in the dauntingly thankless role of Jackson’s shrill queen bee Hilly Holbrook, but Hilly has not a single humanizing moment, and bears the indignity of an especially perfunctory comeuppance — not the only one to befall her, incidentally — involving toilets. On the other end of the spectrum, a scene of Aibileen and Minny being boisterously welcomed at a black church meeting is a little too perfectly sentimental.
Above and beyond its shortcomings, however, “The Help” has a great warmth of feeling for its trio of protagonists, and generally tells their story with deep affection and appropriate humor. Even male viewers, if they can be pried away from their giant talking robots and sword-wielding barbarian warriors, may appreciate that.
Grade: A-
Director: Tate Taylor
Cast: Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone,Bryce Dallas Howard
Running time: 2 hrs., 17 min.
Rating: PG-13 for thematic material
Location: Opened Wednesday at theatersnationwide
