Why would you make a film about the RECENT horrors of racism in the American south, and then have it be totally antiseptic, bland and completely nonthreatening? What is the point of doing this? Are we so fucking emotionally retarded in this country that we can’t handle anything but puff pastry renditions of history? It’s like Hollywood has done very sophisticated market research to figure out the exact limit on the amount of “reality” that can be permitted in this kind of film, before people start leaving the theater with ideas in their heads.

The Help is entertaining enough, I suppose, but it does not stray one inch beyond “the formula.” There is not one scene with spontaneous energy in the entire film. Everything is very clean and fake-looking – nothing rings true, nothing! The film has no edge what-so-ever. The casting involves a lot of talented people, but none of the roles are cast in an inspired way, and all the performances are a bit one-dimensional (Compare this film to Mona Lisa Smile to see multi-dimensional performances in young female roles within a similar period piece.) Emma Stone comes across like a sexy Martian who just stepped out of her flying saucer. And please, someone, write Viola Davis a role where she can play a powerful, sexy, bold, confident, sophisticated woman, instead of this same mumbling, downtrodden working stiff she keeps getting stuck with!

Just to round out my commentary, let me just add that all the humor in the movie is telegraphed from a thousand miles away, the music is completely unoriginal and unremarkable, and like so many filmmakers nowadays they couldn’t be bothered to write a full screenplay, so they have poor Viola Davis do a bunch of bland and boring narration throughout the entire movie.

I don’t know what else to say about this film. It’s not bad – my wife and I both enjoyed it for what it was. Go see it if you want to see a decent, Hollywoody social issues film that will amuse without ruffling your feathers too much.