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Alynda Wheat, People: VERY GOOD (cg) "...for a film born of suffering and steeped in controversy, it's highly entertaining.... it's funny when it needs to be and stays with you in the best ways." (Read the full review...) 239 words, 08/11/11 Mary Pols, Time: GOOD "It's easy to pick sides, easy to feel good... But there is nothing easy about Viola Davis' uncompromising performance. She makes 'The Help' impossible to dismiss." (Read the full review...) 699 words, 08/10/11 David Germain, Associated Press: OUTSTANDING (cg) "...popular big-screen entertainment at its best. Provocative without turning preachy, tender without tumbling into sentimentality... above all enormously enjoyable." (Read the full review...) 1,019 words, 08/09/11 Thelma Adams, Us Weekly: OUTSTANDING (cg) "...compelling, complicated story about love and hatred across racial lines delivers an instant classic that's faithful to the novel -- and will also inspire new fans." (Read the full review...) 116 words, 08/11/11 Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: OUTSTANDING (cg) "...emotionally enveloping, sharply alive.... there isn't a caricature in it. Every woman on screen is fresh, live, and three-dimensional... a stirring salute..." (Read the full review...) 755 words, 08/12/11 Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: OUTSTANDING (cg) "A deeply touching human story filled with humor and heartbreak... Short on style and flashy technique [but] compensates with genuine emotional force.... The actors are sublime.... an intimate epic." (Read the full review...) 458 words, 08/05/11 Claudia Puig, USA Today: VERY GOOD (cg) "...sidesteps easy sentimentality. As the film's heart and soul, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer add vast reserves of depth and dignity to a crowd-pleasing tale." (Read the full review...) 482 words, 08/10/11 Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com: VERY GOOD (cg) "...a good film, involving and wonderfully acted. I was drawn into the characters and quite moved, even though all the while I was aware it was a feel-good fable..." (Read the full review...) 689 words, 08/10/11 Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: MODERATE (cg) "...there are fleeting moments when a better, truer, almost good movie seems to be struggling to the surface in spite of itself." (Read the full review...) 725 words, 08/08/11
Manohla Dargis, New York Times: FAIR "...a big, ole slab of honey-glazed hokum.... cautious, at times bizarrely buoyant... the performances are almost all overly broad, sometimes excruciatingly so..." (Read the full review...) 1,146 words, 08/10/11 Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: WEAK (cg) "...noticeably lacking in novelist Kathryn Stockett's instinctive nuance.... details are often overlooked, the major themes are thrust on screen with forceful simplicity..." (Read the full review...) 418 words, 08/10/11 Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: VERY GOOD "...a delicious peppery stew of home-cooked, 1960s Southern-style racism that serves up a soulful dish of what ails us and what heals us." (Read the full review...) 1,204 words, 08/10/11 Sara Stewart, New York Post: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "...like a lot of Southern fare made with Crisco: you'll want to gobble it up, but it's not particularly nourishing." (Read the full review...) 594 words, 08/10/11 Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: VERY GOOD (cg) "...some film adaptations owe their success primarily to the rightness of the casting.... Viola Davis creates a whole character we care about, and feel we know..." (Read the full review...) 716 words, 08/10/11 Rafer Guzman, New York Newsday: OUTSTANDING (cg) "...incredibly refreshing.... succeeds precisely because it never overdoes the hand-wringing. 'The Help' is one thing message movies rarely are: It's fun." (Read the full review...) 341 words, 08/11/11 David Edelstein, New York Magazine: GOOD "...has too glowing a palette and too many TV-style close-ups. But it's an unusually thorough emotional workout..." (Read the full review...) 863 words, 08/15/11 Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: VERY GOOD (cg) "...a good film, involving and wonderfully acted. I was drawn into the characters and quite moved, even though all the while I was aware it was a feel-good fable..." (Read the full review...) 689 words, 08/10/11 Karina Longworth, Village Voice/LA Weekly: FAIR "...a fairly typical Hollywood flattening of history, with powerful villains and disenfranchised heroes." (Read the full review...) 758 words, 08/10/11 Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: VERY GOOD (cg) "We find little in the way of revelation about racial inequality in America, but fodder to make us think, which may be all that can be expected..." (Read the full review...) 889 words, 08/10/11 Rick Groen, Toronto Globe & Mail: MODERATE (cg) "At a running time well over two hours, the film realistically captures the eternal fight for civil rights in one crucial regard: It too seems without end." (Read the full review...) 849 words, 08/10/11 Susan G. Cole, Toronto Now: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "...the Junior League matrons exploiting the help - especially Bryce Dallas Howard as Hilly - play their parts to stereotypically shrieking heights." (Read the full review...) 168 words, 08/11/11
Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: MODERATE (cg) "...precisely at the time that 'The Help' transpires, African Americans across Mississippi were registering to vote and agitating for political change." (Read the full review...) 802 words, 08/10/11 Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: VERY GOOD (cg) "...a movie of imaginative sympathy that gets into the skin of its characters, into their hearts, and, ultimately, into ours." (Read the full review...) 695 words, 08/10/11 Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: OUTSTANDING (cg) "...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." (Read the full review...) 707 words, 08/10/11 Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star-Tribune: OUTSTANDING (cg) "...will trigger conspicuous Kleenex consumption and then, having broken the viewers' hearts, carefully mend them.... has a mature appreciation of human truth." (Read the full review...) 742 words, 08/10/11 Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: VERY GOOD (cg) "The acting is uniformly excellent, and the cause couldn't be nobler. What the film lacks is a strong point of view. The story is all over the place on that front..." (Read the full review...) 719 words, 08/10/11 Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "...too pious for farce and too eager to please... another Hollywood movie that sees racial progress as the province of white do-gooderism." (Read the full review...) 1,271 words, 08/10/11 Stephen Whitty, New Jersey Star-Ledger: VERY GOOD (cg) "...while 'The Help' is wholly entertaining, you never get the sense it's telling you the whole story.... it asks hard questions about class and color and child care." (Read the full review...) 523 words, 08/10/11 Amy Biancolli, San Francisco Chronicle: VERY GOOD (cg) "...splendid entertainment - a film that makes us root for the good guys, hiss at the bad and convulse in laughter when good wreaks vengeance with a smile." (Read the full review...) 520 words, 08/10/11 Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times: VERY GOOD (cg) "...it's a rare treat to see a movie focusing on such a strong female ensemble. Director Tate Taylor and the actresses do well with the small moments..." (Read the full review...) 644 words, 08/12/11 Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "...those of us who already know that racism is bad could use a little more challenge and a little less help." (Read the full review...) 390 words, 08/10/11 Steve Persall, St. Petersburg Times: VERY GOOD (cg) "...polishes the civil rights era like its heroic maids shine the silverware.... never trivializes Jim Crow segregation but doesn't take it as seriously as the subject deserves." (Read the full review...) 540 words, 08/11/11 Tom Long, Detroit News: EXCELLENT (cg) "Appalling, entertaining, touching and perhaps even a bit healing... an old-fashioned grand yarn of a film, the sort we rarely get these days. Rich indeed." (Read the full review...) 555 words, 08/10/11 Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: VERY GOOD (cg) "...never loses sight of the sharp edge of casual, pervasive racism and how it poisons the lives of everyone -- black and white -- in early 1960s Jackson, Mississippi." (Read the full review...) 633 words, 08/10/11
Karina Longworth, Village Voice/LA Weekly: FAIR "...a fairly typical Hollywood flattening of history, with powerful villains and disenfranchised heroes." (Read the full review...) 758 words, 08/10/11 Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend: EXCELLENT (cg) "Moving and powerful.... Sporting some of the greatest actresses, both young and veteran, working in Hollywood today, 'The Help' is stacked from top to bottom." (Read the full review...) 733 words, 08/09/11 Peter Keough, Boston Phoenix: POOR (cg) "Like 'The Blind Side,' salves white guilt by scapegoating the wrong villains, crediting the wrong heroes, and exploiting the victims." (Read the full review...) 157 words, 08/11/11 Scott Tobias, AV Club: WEAK (cg) "...rigged for crowd-pleasing payoffs... those payoffs are about honoring white viewers for not being horrible racists. Kudos to them." (Read the full review...) 396 words, 08/10/11 Stephanie Zacharek, Movieline: EXCELLENT (cg) "The 'black maid' may be a cliché. But when was the last time we saw a story told from her point of view?" (Read the full review...) 1,415 words, 08/10/11 Andrew Schenker, Slant: POOR (cg) "High school creative-writing-class ironies of all kinds abound... its attitude toward the whole racist setup reeks of a toned-down paternalism." (Read the full review...) 808 words, 08/09/11 Susan G. Cole, Toronto Now: GOOD (NOT GREAT) (cg) "...the Junior League matrons exploiting the help - especially Bryce Dallas Howard as Hilly - play their parts to stereotypically shrieking heights." (Read the full review...) 168 words, 08/11/11 Curt Holman, Atlanta Creative Loafing: WEAK (cg) "...captures all the humidity of Civil Rights-era Mississippi, but scarcely any of the dramatic heat.... lurches awkwardly between manipulative pathos and kitschy comedy." (Read the full review...) 517 words, 08/10/11 MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher: OUTSTANDING (cg) "...there's nothing of the chick-flick ghetto about this movie. If movies that're all men and no women can be universal, so can this one." (Read the full review...) 971 words, 10/20/11
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: GOOD (NOT GREAT) "...takes us on a pop-cultural tour that savors the picturesque, and strengthens stereotypes it purports to shatter." (Read the full review...) 691 words, 08/12/11 Manohla Dargis, New York Times: FAIR "...a big, ole slab of honey-glazed hokum.... cautious, at times bizarrely buoyant... the performances are almost all overly broad, sometimes excruciatingly so..." (Read the full review...) 1,146 words, 08/10/11 David Denby, New Yorker: VERY GOOD "...parts of it are so moving and well acted that any objections to what's second-rate seem to matter less as the movie goes on... director Tate Taylor brings out the best in his large cast of women." (Read the full review...) 1,493 words, 08/08/11 Ella Taylor, NPR: FAIR "...while my neighbor had used up her hankie supply by the end of the movie, I left dry-eyed and disappointed." (Read the full review...) 744 words, 08/09/11 Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: VERY GOOD "...a delicious peppery stew of home-cooked, 1960s Southern-style racism that serves up a soulful dish of what ails us and what heals us." (Read the full review...) 1,204 words, 08/10/11 Dana Stevens, Slate: GOOD (NOT GREAT) "...a high-functioning tearjerker, but the catharsis it offers feels glib and insufficient, a Barbie Band-Aid on the still-raw wound of race relations in America." (Read the full review...) 748 words, 08/11/11 Andrew O'Hehir, Salon: EXCELLENT "You could also describe it as an accretion of familiar ingredients: 'Mad Men' plus 'Steel Magnolias' plus 'To Kill a Mockingbird' plus 'Mississippi Burning.' " (Read the full review...) 1,046 words, 08/09/11
Peter Debruge, Daily Variety: EXCELLENT "...enlightening and deeply affecting..." (Read the full review...) 1,141 words, 08/07/11 Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter: MODERATE "...self-conscious and self-congratulatory portrait of the Jim Crow South does at least contain two magnificent, award-worthy performances by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer." (Read the full review...) 1,018 words, 08/07/11 Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: VERY GOOD "...a delicious peppery stew of home-cooked, 1960s Southern-style racism that serves up a soulful dish of what ails us and what heals us." (Read the full review...) 1,204 words, 08/10/11 Emanuel Levy, Cinema 24/7: GOOD (cg) "Episodic to a fault, and old-fashioned in execution.... vacillating between poignant and serious moments to some that are trivial and overtly comedic in their eagerness to please." (Read the full review...) 682 words, 08/10/11 Manohla Dargis, New York Times: FAIR "...a big, ole slab of honey-glazed hokum.... cautious, at times bizarrely buoyant... the performances are almost all overly broad, sometimes excruciatingly so..." (Read the full review...) 1,146 words, 08/10/11 Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: GOOD (NOT GREAT) "...takes us on a pop-cultural tour that savors the picturesque, and strengthens stereotypes it purports to shatter." (Read the full review...) 691 words, 08/12/11
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