Help Not Wanted

With a phletora of bad movies out there, how the heck did I choose "The Help" as the one I would go see?

Well, I got duped.  Again.  Swayed by the box office numbers.  As well as some positive word-of-mouth from well-meaning friends, who will no longer receive birthday greetings from me.  The reviews from them all started the same way.

"The Help was fabulous.  You have to see it."

Why?

"It's really, really good."

How is it really, really good?

"Ummmmm.................."

I never get a complete answer.

So I went to judge for myself.  Knowing fully well what I was going to get.  A wonderful opportunity to run a really snarky piece for this blog.

"The Help" is the cheapest and most amateurish piece of garbage I have seen in years.  Hiding behind some allegedly good acting, the incredibly hokey script attempts to rise to Shakespearean levels when it can't even get past Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs and Ham."   This movie was adapted from a best selling book by Kathryn Stockett and I am shocked it never made that dumbbell Oprah Winfrey's book club.  It's just the kind of trash Doprah would promote.

"The Help" sold lots of books as a result of Stockett telling her own true story of being a White child being raised by her family's Black maid.  This leads me to believe that thousands of people are having battery issues with their Kindles because I can't imagine how all those folks got snookered by this kernel of flotsam.

Naturally, Hollywood can't let an attempt to mend the racial divide in this country go by, so they scoop up the rights to the novel and even hire Stockett's pal, Tate Taylor, to write and direct it.  Indeed, Taylor didn't need a camera.  He could have simply gone down to Petco for a pooper scooper because the end result is nothing but shit.

Sadly, these two White creative types have effectively put race relations in America back about seventy years.  In a genre where superlative works with something to say like "Driving Miss Daisy" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" have given words and images to really digest, the two stooges behind "The Help" have created nothing more than a Road Runner cartoon.

Well, cartoon is half right.  In this movie, all the White characters come off as buffoons and single-layered comic strip villains.  Not a single redeeming quality is found in any of them, except for the hero played by Emma Stone, which just happens to be based on the author Kathryn Stockett.  Funny how that works. 

Meanwhile, all the Black help in the film are nothing short than angelic.  I waited for them all to sprout wings and halos.  Stuck in the racially charged 60s, they hold the entire Mississippi town together.  They are the ones raising all the white children of their bimbo-like employers.  They are cooking.  They are cleaning.  They are perhaps even resolving the Cuban missile crisis.

And, of course, this is just one more movie that shows us the Kennedy assassination through the eyes of a racial group who are now utterly despondent at the loss of their great White hope.  If only could I direct author Stockett and director Taylor to those old newsreels which clearly showed the Kennedys cavorting during their Hyannis Port summers.  In the background, unclogging their toilet bowls, were plenty of Black help.  And who knows how stingy that old fossil Rose was with their pay?

The cast of this sewer back-up tries valiantly to rise above the material, but you can't expect donkeys to fly for long.  Bryce Dallas Howard, Ron's daughter and essentially "Opie Junior," is dealt the worst hand of all having to play the  worst of all the White characters.  She is made to look so detestable that Nancy Pelosi comes off as a lovable Muppet in comparison.   Now coming from a decent talent pedigree, I would hope that Miss Howard would have the gumption to move this role into a much more believable realm.  Nope.  She acted what was on the page, which is pure junk.  Sadly, she took the lazy way out.

Of course, given that this is a movie about oppression in the South, it's a federal law that producers cast in a supporting role Miss Cicely Tyson.  And I also think that calling her "Miss" is also a civil ordinance as well.  Miss Tyson does her usual "you-can't-make-me-sit-in-the-back-of-the-bus" act and then dies off-camera.  The rest of the film died right there in the middle of the screen for all to see.

Like a super hero comic strip or a Worldwide Wrestling match, there are no surprises in this story which lasted more than two hours and maybe even two days.  You can see the plot points emerging before you even pay for your Raisinets at the candy counter.  The Black help will triumph.  The White employers will look like fools.  And anybody who paid full price to see this tripe is equally as stupid.

"The Help," under the hackneyed watch of Stockett and Taylor, is simply rehashing old wounds when there are oodles of fresh ones that need to be addressed.  In today's world of Al Sharpton and flash mobs and Presidential beer summits, there are plenty of opportunities for new looks at new problems.  And, if a movie comes out as a result, so be it.  This time around, the Acme Company anvil might be falling on the head of somebody completely different.

Dinner last night:  Grilled chicken teriyaki.