The Help

I didn't mention before, but I finished the book about half a week ago; I really enjoyed it. I won't discuss the whole thing with the premise being that the black side hadn't been told and yet it was in fact written by a white woman, because I'm still not sure how I feel about that fact. I will, however, say that it is a good book, and if I had to wager, I would guess it's at least decently accurate.Anyway, that's not what I was going to write about. I was going ot write about how I saw the movie with my mother and my sister tonight.
As always, we must first discuss the previews: I won't lie, I wanted to see most of the movies that had previews, including One Day, which I've heard got panned, but I don't even care, I still want to see it. I also really want to see whatever the movie involving Anton Yelchin was, becuase Anton Yelchin is awesome, and I totally managed to correctly identify the girl in the movie as the one girl from Northanger Abbey, which makes me feel proud (god my life is maybe a little pathetic).
On to the movie: for me, the start was rocky. I think there were times when things were edited a bit oddly, and maybe it's just my recent reading of the book that's making me think this, but parts just seemed like they weren't flowing/weren't connecting in a way that made sense. Like, Treelore's story seemed like it didn't quite...fit. And Skeeter's random demand to know what happened to Constantine during dinner was just odd (also, I'm sorry, they should've done something else for that flashback. Emma Stone just looked like she was wearing weird clothes, not like she was truly younger). In addition, I have to say: there were some inconsistencies in characters that really bothered me. Minnie was a big one; she sometimes seemed like the badass/funny woman she was supposed to be, and sometimes she just...wasn't. Mrs. Phelan was another one; the whole, "suddenly not racist" thing was weird. I don't know, it just felt wrong.
To be honest, the Minnie issue, and some of the other ones, sprung from the fact that the movie was weird in how it played the funny-serious line. It didn't feel quite right; the funny parts were funny, and the touching parts were truly touching (definitely cried a couple times), but they were awkwardly put together. Like, I feel like Up did this great job of leading off with the terribly sad and moving, and then getting to funny really successfully, and going back and forth beautifully, and I felt like this movie managed to kind of do this most of the time, but then other times just...lost it. I also think that maybe the other part was that the movie lacked the fear: I didn't ever feel like these characters were truly risking things, not even when Medgar Evans was shot. And that lack of fear really makes the entire thing just a little bit flatter; it lacks that extra oomph.
Anyway, enough complaining: now for things that were done really well: Aibileen. She was amazing, especially in her scenes with Mae Mobley. Elizabeth, who had just enough of that subtle, passive-aggressive racism. The Stuart-Skeeter relationship: it actually felt real, and wrong, and it was kind of wonderful that you could just tell they were wrong, without it being necessary to show all these different moments when there was a disconnect. Celia Foote, and the Benefit were also great, and pretty funny. Um...the soundtrack?? Thomas Newman is AWESOME, and his scores always have this hopeful-yet-sad sound, and their so subtle you don't even realize they're there (I'm a little in love with his Series of Unfortunate Events soundtrack. I can just listen to it and start crying; it's that good.)
So yeah. I would probably recommend reading the book after seeing the movie on this one; I tried to avoid comparing them in this post, because that seldom really goes well, but the book has such a strong voice to it, it's a little like a movie playing in your head - and so seeing the movie afterwards is just really disconcerting. But do see the movie; just make sure you read the book too.