Basically this is being a great movie for the approach that it's taking. It's being a drama, that however is being brought in a quite entertaining way. It doesn't make "The Help" the heaviest drama you will ever see, despite of its heavy and serious subject but that doesn't mean that it doesn't let its message come across as anything powerful or effective.
Because the movie wasn't trying to be over-sentimental or heavy handed with its subject, it actually became a far more involving movie to watch. It was easy to care for most of the characters because they got portrayed as real humans, you could identify easily yourself with. It also really made the movie pleasant to follow and you won't even notice it's a 146 minutes long movie. It makes it a bit of a shame that the last 20 minutes of the movie felt the need to be still extremely sentimental and sappy. Really, I don't believe this was needed for this movie at all. In my opinion it felt too forced and was like a cheap way to let the audience leave the theaters crying.
It's true that the movie due to its approach never goes all out and mostly plays things safe but I don't really hold that against this movie. It's simply a movie made for a broad audience, so it could get its story and message across to as many different people as possible.
Actually it's a real accomplishment that the movie works out as well as it did. Because if you strip everything away from it, it's being just like an ordinary made for TV movie. It's story is very typical for that but yet the movie works out as something way more than that. It's really a well made and put together movie by director Tate Taylor, who really wasn't all that experienced yet when he did this movie.
Of course things are also getting lift to greater heights by its fantastic cast. Really everyone seemed perfectly cast and gave away a great performance. Of course most of the talk is about Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer but next to Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard really gave away the best performance in this movie, in my opinion. Sort of a shame she is getting overlooked for her role in this movie, while everyone around her is getting nominated for something, for their part in this movie, including for the big prizes.
A great movie, about a not much talked about- but all important subject.
8/10
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