The Help: A Comedy Disguised as a PBS Special
I went to see “The Help” because my Mom wanted to go. She is in her seventies, confined to a wheelchair or walker most of the time, and wants to see a film in a theater two or three times a year. When she makes the decision to see something I just take her, no argument. I had to drag her to see “Midnight in Paris”, which she loved, as I knew she would. She really wanted to see “The Help”; Oprah had recommended it, the ultimate seal of approval. I like movies about swordfights, gangsters and spaceships, but when she wants to see something I just take her. I expected to hate “The Help”, but I actually sort of like it. It is “helpful “that the film is a comedy in disguised as American Masterpiece Theater...
I can understand why audiences raised on the Jim Carrey and fart jokes might not see it that way. The Help is a highbrow comedy of manners. It has some sophistication in its humor if not in its ideology. It about how a group of African American maids gang up to tell their story of grinding exploitation and petty abuse by a group of lazy, bitchy Southern housewives. Sound like fun?
Actually it is. Martin Luther said the best thing you could do to the Devil is laugh at him. The housewives are marvelous parodies of Southern belles. The maids and their white inevitable white helper manage some vindication. A better America is the long term result along with female empowerment and a grinding economic future where we will all be treated as Jim Crow black maids by our eventual Chinese overlords. Really do we need another film saying racism is wrong? At least in Obama’s America it can be the subject of some comedy.
This is a film that I would wait for on video, unless you need something for date night that is high on estrogen. It is small screen friendly, but worth the price of admission. My Mom loved it.
Review By Mark Tygart our Elder care specialist movie reviewer moonlighter
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