Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2008)

All Critics (218) | Top Critics (42) | Fresh (199) | Rotten (19) | DVD (7)

The remarkable Sidibe is one of several daring casting choices by director Lee Daniels.

April 4, 2011 Full Review

Rafer Guzman

Newsday

Top Critic

Precious is an emotional powerhouse, a triumph of bruising humor and bracing hope that deserves its place among the year's best films.

February 2, 2011 Full Review

Peter Travers

Rolling Stone

Top Critic

A film full of life and love, well-meaning and, judging by the reaction in the US, a genuine and important phenomenon that says act - don't dwell - on your dreams.

February 2, 2010 Full Review

Dave Calhoun

Time Out

Top Critic

Avoiding the conventional tricks of lifting an audience up, the movie looks into this girl's wide, brown face and her bleak little life and sees, despite everything, a reason to live.

November 24, 2009 Full Review | Comments (2)

Wesley Morris

Boston Globe

Top Critic

If you do watch -- and you certainly should -- you will see one of the most remarkable performances ever set to film, given by Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe.

November 20, 2009 Full Review | Comments (3)

Tom Long

Detroit News

Top Critic

It melodramatizes everything and yet its overall effect is something more than melodrama.

November 20, 2009 Full Review | Comment (1)

Peter Rainer

Christian Science Monitor

Top Critic

Its flaws are more so of the executional than the conceptual kind, the whole more than the sum of its parts.

February 3, 2013 Full Review

Rob Humanick

Projection Booth

The bottom line is that you've never seen anything quite like this -- in its highs, its lows, its gaffes, its embarrassments or its uplift.

April 3, 2012 Full Review

Ben Kenigsberg

Time Out Chicago

While Mo'Nique's performance is the barnburner, it is Sidibe and her classmates who resonate, who inhabit a world outside of themselves and their wretched fiefdoms.

April 4, 2011 Full Review

Michelle Orange

Movieline

Sidibe's Susan Boyle moment of misdirected public pity notwithstanding, hers is a rare and welcome presence in American independent film.

April 4, 2011 Full Review

Jonathan Kiefer

Sacramento News & Review

The story's world is stacked against Precious, and the movie's marketing engine is stacked against Sidibe, but in some ways those structures explain why we're hearing about this young woman in the first place.

April 4, 2011 Full Review

Robert Davis

Paste Magazine

While Precious certainly looks the part of the powerful award-worthy drama, it does very little to convince the audience that it actually is.

April 4, 2011 Full Review

Jason Zingale

Bullz-Eye.com

A powerful, deeply moving film that drives an arrow straight through your heart.

April 4, 2011 Full Review

Clint O'Connor

Cleveland Plain Dealer

It's probably one of the most important films of the year.

April 4, 2011 Full Review

Chris Bumbray

JoBlo's Movie Emporium

Gabourey Sidibe plays the title character and if she wasn't an actor before this, she sure is now.

April 4, 2011 Full Review

Dave White

Movies.com

Mo'Nique isn't just a box-office draw here, she is a snarling, disaffected she-demon...

February 3, 2011 Full Review

Mike Edwards

What Culture

Precious ... [achieves] moments of haunting, devastating power, yet too often [lapses] into laughably ridiculous melodrama ... Precious is no easy ride. As far as harrowing films go, it makes The Road seem like The Wiz.

October 21, 2010 Full Review

Simon Miraudo

Quickflix

This isn't The Biggest Loser, where self-esteem is measures in kilos, but this is in fact a film about a teacher nurturing a young woman's mind and soul, carrying the torch of films like To Sir With Love, Stand and Deliver, and Dangerous Minds.

July 4, 2010

Cris Kennedy

Screenwize

Sidibe fearlessly embodies a member of society that deserves recognition. Illiteracy, obesity and abuse are tragic and uncomfortable realities that Precious goes a long way to demystify.

April 14, 2010 Full Review | Comment (1)

Alice Tynan

Concrete Playground

Propelled forward by tremendous performances, Precious is a pedestrian exploration of social themes and mental, physical and sexual abuse.

April 2, 2010 Full Review | Comments (2)

Wesley Lovell

Cinema Sight

Most notable for the performances of newcomer and Oscar nominee Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'Nique,as her abusive mother. Set in 1980s Harlem, the film would be just another inspirational tearjerker were it not for the dedication of the performers and the visua

March 13, 2010 Full Review

Philip Martin

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

The fetid insanity of it all seems appropriate given the circumstances.

March 7, 2010 Full Review

Rob Humanick

Projection Booth

It's a simple story, told well with some blinding performances.

February 25, 2010 Full Review | Comments (3)

Marc Fennell

Triple J

Un drama duro, conmovedor, que rescata la importancia de la solidaridad y la asistencia social ante la desesperanza. Hay un increíble duelo actoral entre Mo'Nique y Gabourey Sidibe, dos de las mayores revelaciones actorales del año.

February 18, 2010 Full Review

Enrique Buchichio

Uruguay Total

• 1. Pretty Blond Girl: Like, oh, teah...I'm the shit. This fat bitch wishes she was me.
  – Submitted by Mercedes B (9 months ago)
• 1. Clareece "Precious" Jones: What? What?
  – Submitted by Anthony A (16 months ago)
• 1. Clareece "Precious" Jones: Some folks has a lot of things around them that shines for other peoples. I think that maybe some of them was in tunnels. And in that tunnel, the only light they had, was inside of them. And then long after they escape that tunnel, they sitll be shining for everybody else.
  – Submitted by Nusfish K (16 months ago)
• 1. Consuelo: F for fat. [Precious smacks her in the face twice and everyone screams in excitement]
  2. Ms. Rain: Hey! Hey! Quit!
  3. Rhonda: Fuck her up!
  4. Consuelo: What the fuck!?
  5. Clareece "Precious" Jones: What? What?
  6. Ms. Rain: Quit it!
  7. Consuelo: [at Joann] Shut the fuck up! [at Ms. Rain] She just slapped me!
  8. Ms. Rain: [at Consuelo] Get out! [at Precious] We don't fight in my class.
  – Submitted by Nhia T (17 months ago)
• 1. KFC Cashier: What you want, baby?
  2. Clareece "Precious" Jones: Give me a basket, please.
  3. KFC Cashier: Sides?
  4. Clareece "Precious" Jones: I don know yet, still thinking about it. Gotta watch my figur.
  5. KFC Cashier: Bouchell, you got a ten piece ready?
  6. Clareece "Precious" Jones: [Precious looks around for a bit at the people and the time. Cashier comes back with basket of chicken] Potato Salad. Thank you. [Precious runs off without paying]
  7. KFC Cashier: Oh hell no she didn't! Uh-uh! Get her ass! Get that big bitch!
  – Submitted by Nhia T (17 months ago)
• 1. Joann: Consuelo is a slut, Joann is not a slut.
  2. Consuelo: You da one who's da hoe up in here! I don't know who you call---
  3. Rhonda: Perfect, you get a gold star! [everyone laughs]
  – Submitted by Nhia T (17 months ago)

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