The Help Reviews
We Got This Covered
Outstanding performances and a delicate approach to racial tensions make this film a cut above other inspirational period dramas.
Full Review
| Original Score: 9/10
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Transcends its comfort-food-for-Oprah's Book Club wrapping to get at something deeper, the gray in a story that seems so far removed as to be utterly black and white."
Movie Talk
Octavia Spencer's Minny provides the movie's funniest moments, especially when she gets her own back on former employer Hilly with an audacious reprisal that proves that revenge is indeed a dish best served cold.
Uruguay Total
La película realmente triunfa en la exploración de la complicidad y solidaridad que se establece entre mujeres solas, quebradas, necesitadas de oportunidades e inconformes con los moldes sociales preestablecidos.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
7M Pictures
I found it surprisingly enjoyable. And I suppose that's the greatest compliment I could give the film: I didn't hate it, even if I was dreading it going in.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Movie Metropolis
A quiet but powerful film that really does have Oscar written all over it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 9/10
ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Aimed at heart and conscience, novel and film have their overdone moments but remain worthy of close attention.
KWQC-TV (Iowa)
Brimming with believable, likeable women characters and set against the turbulence of Mississippi in the 1960s, 'The Help' is almost as good as Kathryn Stockett's novel.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Entertainment Spectrum
"The Help" is refreshing and possibly the best film of the year.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Cinema Signals
To "the help," the possibility of the children growing up as clones of their parents isn't a consideration. It's all about loving the innocent. But, it's a dilemma.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Fan The Fire
This is a generally family-friendly affair which isn't interested in getting its hands too dirty.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Spectrum (St. George, Utah)
Some will scoff that it covers familiar territory or that the message should have been angrier and louder...but there is beauty in its lack of heavy handed sermonizing.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
Film4
As hard to dislike as it is to truly admire, this artfully manipulative issue movie knows where its strengths lie... and most of them lie in Viola Davis.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Total Film
A faithful, heart-warming adaptation that will satisfy fans of the book, divert the uninitiated and tickle the Academy's fancy.
Observer [UK]
The movie is facile, not a little patronising, and it ends up as crude and sentimental.
Real.com
This coming of age tale is deeply affecting, magnificently acted and truly enlightening ... are truly inspirational women who are an absolute joy to spend time with.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Daily Express
I was disappointed at the end to realize the picture was fiction not fact but perhaps that's a tribute to the authenticity writer-director Tate Taylor achieves in this beautifully realized picture.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Birmingham Mail
The running time of 146 minutes takes too much wind out of Aibileen's sails, but her tear-jerking dignity in the denouement is marvellous to behold.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Independent
There are some magnificent elements here... The downside is the mawkishness and the rambling narrative structure.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
This is London
It tackles a challenging, inflammatory subject in the corniest, safest way possible.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
