Well it has been a while. Moving will do that to you. But we are finally settled and I am starting to get motivated to write again. I have seen so many movies that I have not reviewed. It wasn't that they weren't good enough to review, I was just busy or didn't feel like writing. But we now have internet and my husband is playing with the NookColor we got yesterday so I have taken over his laptop. So on with the show.
Theater Worthy
The Help was such a good movie. I know a lot of people have read the book and think it is amazing, I may even get around to reading it myself one day. I don't know what, if any, changes have been with the transition to the film. If you have read the book, try not to over analyze the difference. I do that myself, which is why I don't read books right before a movie comes out. I don't like reading a book just because they turn it into a movie. And if possible I like to wait a couple of year between the book and the movie so the little details don't bother me when changed. That said the movie was amazing.
When I first saw the poster for this film while exiting a theater, it made me stop. I wanted to know more about it. Then I saw that Emma Stone was in it and put it on my "Movies to See" list. Like many, I love Emma Stone. Easy A was delightfully hilarious. Her quirkiness is charming. She is young but undoubtedly talented. The rest of the cast was also amazing. I recognized Viola Davis from Doubt. She was only a small role in that movie but she definitely made an impression. She was perfect for Aibileen. Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer, Allison Janney I mean the entire cast was perfect. This was truly a feel good film. Spencer was the comedy of the film. She could have stolen the show, but since every element was so strong it balanced perfectly. Howard was perfectly held together. Her hair and makeup were always perfectly placed. I liked that flakes of her mascara were always on her eyelids. It showed that she was always fraying at the edges, like she is barely keeping all her crazy together.
We went to see this movie in the middle of the week in the middle of the day. I felt like it was the day all the book clubs decided to go. Patches of women were scattered throughout the theater, many beyond their middle ages. My husband may have been the only man in the room. But we laughed, and I may have shed a tear. I left the theater feeling so much better than when I came. Most movies just don't do that anymore.
I was amazed at the common place racism of the period. I am from the south, I know it was bad. But to see it displayed so casually was shocking. It really made me glad I didn't live during that time, or right after. Ideology has changed so much, but it still made me look at how society views race. We have certainly come a long way. But from watching other films as comments on society, we still sometimes segregate ourselves. Certainly there should never be a law, or social standard that dictates separation, but I think we have all noticed that people tend to congregate with others like themselves, either by race, gender, or sexual orientation. I think this film was not only empowering the mistreated minority, but showed that people from different backgrounds can understand, support and love each other.
