It’s always nice to see a director take a fresh angle in their career, especially when they have proved their quality time and time again with their tried and trusted genres and styles. In Martin Scorsese, we have one of the true modern masters. His grasp of the fundamentals of film making has produced movies that strike a beautiful balance between true-to-life realism and the gripping fantasy of a good story well told. Scorsese has, with such landmarks as Casino & Raging Bull, become so good at depicting the real world, warts and all, that a film like Hugo, filled as it is with dream-like settings and larger-than-life characters, represents a genuinely intriguing challenge for the old master.

Hugo is based on the the 2007 illustrated novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick. In the 1930s, Hugo (Asa Butterfield), a recently orphaned young boy with a fascination with all things technology-based, lives with his drunken uncle in a Parisian railway station. All his free time is devoted to getting his father’s sole surviving possession, an humanoid robot, to work. With the help of the daughter of the local toy shop owner (Chloe Moretz) his work uncovers a sad story of lost genius.

Take a deep breath, because you’re about to read a sentence that you possibly never thought you’d see again after Avatar, but here it comes anyway, ok…deep breath…see this film in 3D. Shocking right? But shame on us for not having faith in Scorsese, for somehow, someway, he has taken this new medium and explored it to its full potential. Hugo does not fill its audience’s brain with 3D cliches of things popping out of the screen. Instead Scorsese actually uses the extra dimension to emotionally connect the audience to the characters on screen. It’s all very well presenting a film in 3D, but it seems Scorsese and his cast have somehow managed to perfect the art of performing in 3D as well and the results are pleasing to behold.

Scorsese is helped in this regard by a strong cast. Asa Butterfield is an unassuming but assured lead, and he and Chloe Moretz prove again that there is no excuse nowadays for Hollywood not to put in the effort and find child actors who are anything less than excellent. Veterans Sir Ben Kingsley, Richard Griffiths and Frances De La Tour provide expertise galore as a counterpoint to their fresher faced cohorts and the ever reliable Christopher Lee breaks his typecasting for once to play kindly old gent and bookstore owner Monsieur Labisse. It his, however, Sacha Baron Cohen who is the highlight of the piece. In playing Hugo’s nemesis, the uptight and pompous Station Master, Cohen captures a superbly rounded character, with the outward coating of a by-the-book monster concealing a beating heart within.

Hugo isn’t a perfect film by any means. What it gains in approachability and aesthetics, it loses somewhat in pacing and structure. The story sometimes seems like it wants to embrace its more fantastical elements but is held back by Scorsese’s and the writing’s need to hold on to more realistic elements of the story, and at certain points the film loses its normally solid A-to-B structure.

For the most part, however, Hugo is a charming adventure with plenty going for it. Scorsese is not the name most think off when they hear the words “family friendly”, but he has taken to this with the same panache and style that have singled out his older films.

Overall Verdict: A film with something for everyone, Hugo gets past the issues of a slightly meandering plot to deliver a highly satisfying slice of youthful adventure and great story-telling.

Reviewer: Alex Hall

From the second it was announced a film was in the pipeline that was somehow related to John Carpenter’s 1982 movie, The Thing, there’s been much grumbling from fans. However this is a slightly unusual case, as while Carpenter fans have been predictably wary of anything tampering with a classic they love, the early 80s film was actually a remake itself, of the 1951 movie The Thing From Another World. As a result it’s tougher to argue here that things from the past should be preserved in aspic and never touched.

What we have here though isn’t a straight remake, but (as the movie studio insists on calling it) a ‘prelude’ to the Kurt Russell movie. Quite why they gave it the exact same name as the other film is a bit of a mystery then, but it just goes to show some of the muddle-headed business-butting-up-against-entertainment thinking that went into the new The Thing.

Universal apparently originally wanted a remake, but the producers managed to convince them a prequel would make more sense, so that they weren’t tampering with something great. You get the impression though that most of the film was the result of compromises and arguments between the wants of the studio and the makers, with the result we get something that’s unlikely to please either.

If you remember the 1982, that followed a team of American researchers in the Antarctic who discover the destroyed base of a Norwegian team, who seem to have all been killed by something terrible. Shortly afterward, Kurt Russell and co. come under attack from a shape-shifting creature that is presumably what killed the Scandinavians.

This The Thing fills us in on exactly what happened to the Norwegian base, which turns out to be pretty much what happened to Kurt Russell, but not as entertainingly. Rather than having a Kurt Russell clone, the film tries to have an Ellen Ripley clone instead, in the form of Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Kate Lloyd. Kate is an American palaeontologist brought in along with her colleague Adam (Eric Christian Olsen) to help investigate a structure that a group of Norwegian scientists have discovered in the Antarctic ice.

It must have been there for tens of thousands of years, and appears to be an alien spacecraft. After finding an organism inside the ship, it’s removed and despite Kate’s protestations about possible contamination, a sample is taken.

Unsurprisingly, this turns out to be a bad idea.

Soon ‘the thing’ has broken free from the ice, and while the Norwegians and Americans initially think they’ve managed to kill it, it soon becomes apparent it has the ability to replicate any organism and that nobody is safe. From then on it’s only a matter of time before everyone is getting picked off one by one.

While it’s not atrocious, it feels as if The Thing wanted to follow the template of Carpenter’s movie, but mistook what it is about that movie that made it such a lasting success. Undoubtedly, the special effects in the 1982 movie were incredibly impressive, and quite a few reviews of this new version have talked about this The Thing letting things down on that score. The argument seems to be that using CGI is intrinsically inferior. However I would say that actually the effects here are very good and surprisingly in keeping with the original, even if they lack the charm of physical SFX.

The problem with them is that they’re overused and lack the impact of the earlier movie because of the problems in the rest of the film. Carpenter’s movie was a masterclass in creating suspense. It brilliantly set up a world of unease, where nobody can trust anyone else and yet they have to if there’s going to be any chance of escape. The effects then come in to increase the sense of disquiet with their creepy weirdness, but only because you’re already pulled into the movie.

The new Thing meanwhile doesn’t really succeed in making you care about the characters or their predicament, with the effects being used as an attempted coup de grace that is supposed to paper over the fact there’s so little going on elsewhere. It doesn’t really work, although everyone puts a lot of effort into trying to get it to. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is good, even if she doesn’t seem 100% certain what she’s doing there. Likewise, the usually dependable Eric Christian Olsen, Joel Edgerton and Adewale Akkinuoye-Agbaje put their all in, but there’s not much more for them to do than get from A-to-B and wait to see if it’s their turn to die.

That said, it’s far from the worst horror movie out there, and if all you’re looking for is a trip from one OTT gory death to the next, with some okay special effects and nothing much going on in between, then you’ll probably be happy with the movie (especially if you’ve never seen Carpenter’s movie). However if you demand a bit more from your movies, like a decent plot, character and a real sense of suspense, you should look elsewhere.

It ends up almost being like fan fiction, which pays ridiculously close attention to the surface of what’s it trying to do, without realising what really make it tick.

Overall Verdict: Not terrible, but despite being related to a horror great, it’s a relatively low-rent gore-fest, that makes it successfully from one effect filled death to the next, but offer little more.

Reviewer: Jake Davis

 
Ok, here’s my pitch to try and get a poster quote for 50/50 – ‘The funniest film about possibly dying of cancer you’ll see all year!’ I doubt the studio is going to use that one, but it doesn’t mean it’s not true. It also kind of sums up 50/50’s problems, because while it’s very funny, extremely moving, quite sweet and extremely entertaining, the fact it’s about someone with cancer will inevitably limit its audience.

It’s a real shame, as a lot of people will undoubtedly miss out. It doesn’t really matter what I or anyone else says – a movie about cancer sounds like a bummer, and so getting people through the door is gonna be tough. The film undoubtedly suffered this problem in the US, where it got glowing reviews but stalled at $34 million at the box office. If it had been this funny and was about a non-serious disease that makes people fart, it would have undoubtedly made hundreds of millions.

The film is loosely based on the experiences of Ali G producer Will Reiser, who was diagnosed with cancer when he was in his early 20s. He was convinced to write a screenplay about it (although with significant changes made compared to real life) by his friend, Seth Rogen, with the result that the Knocked Up actor stars in the film as a fictionalised version of himself.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt takes on the lead role of Adam, a radio show writer whose back pains turn out not to be a spasm but a rare form of cancer that only has a 50/50 survival rate. After the initial shock, Adam tries to find a way to carry on. Initially he thinks his rock through the ordeal will be his girlfriend, Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard), but while she’s quick to say she’ll see him through his illness, the reality of dealing with cancer may be more than she can handle.

That leaves his best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen), whose heart is in the right place but his mental maturity may not be. There’s also his mother (Anjelica Huston), who’s rather highly strung and already has a husband with dementia to deal with.

As Adam starts chemotherapy, he meets new cancer-stricken friends and also finds out unexpected things about those around him. To help him through all this is therapist Katherine (Anna Kendrick), who desperately wants to make things right, but Adam is only her third patient and she’s not great at negotiating the boundaries between doctor and patient.

50/50 Trailer

What that synopsis doesn’t get across is that 50/50 is really, really funny. It’s one of the few films this year that has literally made me laugh out loud and had the cinema audience I was watching the movie with in stitches. Best of all is that it never does this with cheap laughs. The humour is organic, with the characters finding things to smile about in the situations they’re faced with, no matter how seemingly grim. The script, which was written by Will Reiser with help from Seth Rogen, is great, not so much because you know it comes from personal experience, but because it expertly balances the harsh realities with the humour, and the levity with the emotionally moving.

Director Jonathan Levine also does sterling work, concentrating on bringing us close to the characters, so that when you’re laughing, you’re also coming to care about the people involved, and not just because one of them has cancer. Of course, none of this would work without some good acting. Originally James McAvoy was cast in the lead role, but it’s difficult to imagine him being any better than Gordon-Levitt, who is absolutely pitch-perfect as Adam. I doubt he’ll get an Oscar nomination just because of the way these things work, but he deserves one. It’s a remarkable performance that is funny, wry, clever and emotionally affecting all at once.

Seth Rogen is very good too, even if he essentially just puts on the usual Seth Rogen show, but with a bit more pathos behind it this time. It’s also an increasingly rare chance for Anjelica Huston to show just how good she can be, playing Adam’s mother. Her screen time is pretty short, but she certainly makes her mark.

Anna Kendrick and Bryce Dallas Howard do good work as the women in Adam’s life, although as with so many things Seth Rogen has had a hand in, the female characters are far flatter than the males. Rogen has a rare talent for bringing out the power of the bromance (which is one of this films’ great strengths), but in films he’s been more than just an actor in, younger female characters always seem to come across as a means to an end rather than fully fleshed out people.

And quite frankly, if I was Bryce Dallas Howard I’d be getting a bit paranoid, as after this, Eclipse and The Help, I’d be worried everyone thinks I’m just a complete bitch.

If the film has one weakness, it’s a slightly repetitive tendency to say things are more complex than they initially appear, and to do it in a slightly cheesy way (e.g. Seth Rogen is an ass because he just wants to shag women, but then we’re supposed to realise he’s actually brilliant because he’s secretly reading a book about cancer). It does help illuminate Adam’s journey to realise that while it’s his illness, he’s not alone, but it’s just a shame it’s not handled as well as the rest of the script. It’s not much as a problem though. Indeed, it almost feels mean to quibble about it.

I know that for a lot of you, no matter what I say, 50-50 is going to be a tough sell just because of the subject matter. Audiences have proven over and over again that the only person they want to see die of cancer is Debra Winger in Terms Of Endearment, and quite frankly with a lot of the mawkish, movie-of-the-week style disease films we’ve had in the past three decades, it’s not surprising people feel like they’ve been burned too many times to give another one a chance, but with 50-50 your really should. It may be about cancer, but the main thing you’ll remember as you leave the cinema is how moved you’ve been and how much you’ve laughed.

Overall Verdict: It is indeed the funniest film about possibly dying of cancer you’ll see all year, and I mean that as much higher praise than it might sound.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

 

On paper, The Rum Diary sounds like a sure-fire winner, but in practice it’s slightly more problematic than that. The film sees Johnny Depp returning to the work of Hunter S. Thompson and again playing the kind of Thompson alter-ego that he did so well in Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas. Depp has been intimately involved with the movie, to the point where he was the one who told Thompson to publish it, as the writer had stuffed it in a drawer since the early 60s and never let anyone see it. Depp and Thompson were casting around for something else they could film after Fear & Loathing, and came across The Rum Diary, which was duly published and is Hunter’s only proper novel.

It’s taken rather longer than originally envisaged to get it to the screen, with various financing deals emerging and disappearing until it finally went it front of the camera a decade after it was originally supposed to. This in itself becomes an issue because while it’s Depp’s love letter to his friend and was only going to get made with him in the lead, he’s too old really to play the lead character. It’s a story of a lost young man looking for direction and finding anything but. That would have worked for Depp a few year ago, but he’s now 48. He has great fun in the role and is certainly watchable, but he’s just a bit too old for a tale that’s so invested in the excesses of youth.

Depp plays a journalist called Paul Kemp who arrives in Puerto Rico with the hopes of reporting for The San Juan Star. The paper’s circulation is dropping and editor-in-chief, Edward Lotterman (Richard Jenkins), say’s he’s had way too many employees come and go with “a lack of commitment and too much self-indulgence.” People don’t want the job as much as the Puerto Rican life and the escape from humdrum reality they think comes with it.

However Lotterman reckons Kemp has the enthusiasm he’s looking for and so Paul sets out to explore the region (I do love the idea you get from Thompson that in the past editor’s just let journalists go off and do whatever they hell they wanted, although I’m certain it was never quite how he paints it). Kemp ends up finding a possible story in wealthy American entrepreneur Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), who is hoping to pull off a land development scam. However a complication arises in the form of Sanderson’s attractive fiancée, Chenault (Amber Heard).

There’s plenty more that happens in the movie but the problem is that so little of it really leads anywhere. Kemp’s given a drink and drug problem but nothing really comes of that – although he undoubtedly drinks a lot, takes a fair amount of drugs and smokes endlessly. The script delves into satire and politics (it almost but never fully becomes an anti-authoritarian rant), but none of it goes anywhere – even the over-arching theme of escape is never given much more than a surface gloss.

Part of the problem is Kemp himself, a character it’s difficult to care about as he never really comes to life. He’s a spectator in the Puerto Rican world he finds himself in and while things happen to him, he never really seems part of anything, which makes it difficult to care about him. You can understand what the movie’s trying to do, but it’s tough to make it work. It’s almost a film for Hunter S. Thompson fans, who’ll already be rooting for Depp as the writer’s youthful alter-ego, but for everyone else it’s difficult to care.

Having Withnail & I director Bruce Robinson behind the camera initially seems a good move, as the sensibility of the 1987 cult Brit hit feels like it should work here. However Robinson’s only made four films and his last one was in 1992. It’s difficult not to feel when watching the movie that he’s a little out of practice and the film could have done with a steadier hand. The Rum Diary endless hints at things in its episodic wanderings, but there’s no cohesion to bring things together. Some may say that’s what Thompson always was, but he was the truth and heart of his often difficult to believe books, and that’s lacking here.

None of this is to say that The Rum Diary is bad, as it’s not. It chugs along, some things happen, Depp is fun and charming, Amber Heard is wonderful and there’s never a point where it gets boring. It’s just that when the lights come up, your immediate reaction is likely to be, ‘Is that all?’, as so little has happened that’s added up to anything. There are even some moments where it seems to be striving for greatness, but everyone’s best intentions can’t turn this rambling lark into the anarchic debauchery it wants to be.

It’s a movie lacking in vision. Or at least it’s a movie trapped between visions, with Robinson most of the time going for a surprisingly straightforward narrative style, before throwing in moments of Fear & Loathing style energy and strangeness (including some drug-induced hallucinations). Indeed it’s almost as if Bruce periodically remembers he wanted to make this movie because of Gilliam’s wonderful take on Thompson’s work, but most of the time he’s simply trying to hold things together and tell the non-story story he’s got to work with. He obviously wants to make something that truly captures Thompson, but he just misses.

As mentioned though, it’s not a bad film, it’s just difficult not to feel disappointed that its meandering nature never amounts to much, resulting in something that feels like a missed opportunity. Everyone’s heart is in the right place, but as so often with projects that are made as a tribute or homage – in this case to Hunter S Thompson – everyone is so close to the subject that they narrowly miss what made it special in the first place.

Overall Verdict: Never boring and Depp is fun, but The Rum Diary reaches all over the place and finds little to hang on to.

Reviewer: Jake Davis

 

It’s difficult not to read a synopsis of Kill Keith and feel that the whole thing is a very bad idea – a cheesy joke that shouldn’t have been stretched into an entire movie. However this movie about a serial killer targeting British light entertainment veterans isn’t half as bad as you’d think it’d be. That’s not to say we’re going to see Keith Chegwin walking the red carpet at the Oscars next year (I really don’t know what America would make of him if he did), but Kill Keith managed to keep a smile on my face far more than I ever expected it to.

The movie follows Danny (Marc Pickering, who some may remember as R Wayne in Peter Kaye’s ‘Britain’s Got the Pop Factor’), who’s working as a runner on a popular breakfast TV show. The male host of the programme is about to leave, and in a basement somewhere, a serial killer is torturing a TV executive to find out the shortlist for his replacement. Once he has the names, it’s not long before he begins targeting the likes of Joe Pasquale, Russell Grant and Tony Blackburn (who rather oddly plays his own lookalike, while someone else completely different plays him), and he may also want to kill Keith Chegwin!

Danny may be the only one who can help stop the Breakfast Cereal Killer (and admittedly the film should be taken out back and shot just for that joke, but we’ll try to look past it), and if he plays his cards right, might even be able to land himself a romance with the TV show’s beautiful host, Dawn (Susannah Fielding – 4321).

It would be easy to rip into Kill Keith and pillory it for its many weaknesses. It’s silly, cheesy, many of the jokes are astonishingly lame, and the whole premise of killing past-their-prime celebs is as cringe-inducing as it is potentially amusing. And yet… the film is a lot of fun, as long as you’re prepared to stick your tongue firmly stuck in you cheek and don’t expect it to be anything more than you’d imagine from a serial killer movie starring Keith Chegwin. I’ll admit that you probably haven’t spent much of your life wondering what a serial killer movie starring Keith Chegwin would be like, but have a think about it, and whatever you come up with, then Kill Keith is a little better than that – not much, but enough that it’ll keep you amused through to the credits.

Perhaps most surprising of all is that ol’ Cheggers ain’t a bad actor. It’s often forgotten that before Swap Shop, Saturday Superstore, The Big Breakfast and a subsequent career that’s embraced his own slightly cheesy public perception, Keith was an actor who’s been working since he was 10 years old. Joe Pasquale’s quite fun too in a very small role, while Tony Blackburn doesn’t actually get to do all that much and Russell Grant hams it up like he were starring in a particularly camp panto.

There’s little doubt that anyone with a penchant for pretentiousness or who has no appreciation for slightly bizarre cheesiness (which occasionally borders on the surreal) will hate this film, but if you’re not above a bit of silliness or if you’re just intrigued by a comedy horror with Keith Chegwin in it, you might find Kill Keith is more fun than you imagined.

Overall Verdict: Kill Keith will undoubtedly become a forgotten curio very soon, but it’s fun while it’s here, and certainly better than a Keith Chegwin comedy horror has any right to be.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

Set in Mississippi in the early 60s, The Help deals with the world of segregation, when black women raised the children of white women, but weren’t allowed to use the same drinking fountains, sit in the same part of the bus and, as the movie says, often couldn’t even use the same toilet.

Young, rather liberal, Skeeter (Emma Stone) returns home after getting a college education to find that the black maid she’s known and loved since childhood, Constantine (Cicely Tyson), no longer works for them, but nobody will tell her exactly why not. While all Skeeter’s friends are busy becoming wives and mothers – and never questioning the idea that the black women who work in their houses should be treated as second class citizens – Skeeter embarks on a project to write a book about these maid’s experience of lif. However she needs to recruit some of ‘the help’ to tell her about their lives.

This turns out to be surprisingly dangerous, as it’s against the law to do anything that might encourage the mixing of the races, and any maids involved not only risk getting fired, but there’s also the threat of physical attack or even being killed. However Skeeter manages to get Abileen (Viola Davis), the maid of her friend, to help, as well as Minny (Octavia Spencer), who’s recently been fired by the vindictive, racist, social climbing Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) and is now working for Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain), a young woman who’s a bit of an outcast amongst the young, local, middle-class women.

The Help was a big success when it was released in the US, but also rather controversial. Most of the criticism centred on the fact that the film (and indeed the book it’s based on) rather underplays some of the darker aspects of segregation in the deep south in the 60s, and that it also falls into the long line of movies where non-white people are only able to stand up for themselves and make a difference after a white person comes along to show them the way (think everything from Dances With Wolves to Avatar).

There’s some truth in both these criticisms, but they rather miss the point of what The Help is really all about. For better or worse, this is a movie about the everyday racism of daily life back then, and deliberately told in a way that’s designed to allow modern audiences to relate to it easily and emotionally. It’s almost like a primer in segregation, introducing many of the issues without going into their full ramifications. Likewise the white heroine is used as a way to give white audiences an easy access point to the movie, and ensure that the lingering vestiges of racism don’t make people think this is a black film that’s just for black people (which happens quite often, although it’s rarely questioned). After all, it is everyday white people, many of whom would like to just pretend segregation never happened, who will benefit most from The Help. The film certainly gives you a feel for the truth of the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine, even if it is a rather sanitised truth.

The film does sometimes have slight difficulty bringing to realistic life characters who are in some respects there to represent an aspect of early 60s life. For example, Bryce Dallas Howard comes off as the weakest in an remarkable bunch of performances not because she isn’t doing good work, but because her character, Hilly, almost becomes a cardboard cut-out bitchy villain. She’s there to represent the pernicious and ever growing nature of racism at the time, and how it was as much about demonstrating power and position as it was an absolute and unquestioned belief that black people were inferior to whites. However The Help has difficulty making her a living, breathing person at the same time. There are a few other characters and aspects of the film that can’t cover their heavy-handedness, but as mentioned, this is a movie chock full of brilliant performances that help cover some of The Help’s flaws.

Viola Davis is simply wonderful as the world-weary Abileen, who seems beaten down by the world, yet has a fire inside her that can never quite be put out. It’s also great that The Help has finally gotten people to take notice of Octavia Spencer, who’s a wonderful actress who’s been stealing scenes for years in everything from Being John Malkovich to Dinner For Schmucks. She’s superb as Minny, bringing humour, attitude and heart to the role of Minny.

However the best performance comes from Jessica Chastain in the supporting role of Celia Foote. It’s the sort of ‘airhead with a heart’ part that would normally make the character’s employment of Minny and efforts to be accepted in polite society just a humorous little aside to the main plot. However Chastain manages to pull a hell of a lot more from it, to the point where I sometimes wished the main focus of the movie had been Celia and Minny, rather than Skeeter writing her book. Chastain is utterly wonderful, and I can certainly understand why she’s come from nowhere to land roles in everything from The Tree Of Life to The Debt.

The film is rather over-sentimentalised, and there is a slight feeling you’re getting the Disney version of segregation – where they’re admitting its bad but covering over some of the worst ugliness – but where it works splendidly is in trying to find the emotional heart of the people involved. Sometimes they may flirt on the edge between being personifications of a problem rather than persons in their own right, but thanks to some great performances, the lack of justice and a sense of the degradation inherent to what was happening back then comes through loud and strong.

The Help manages to do all this with great humour. Indeed some have criticised it for being too funny. Some of this criticism comes from po-faced people who think you shouldn’t be allowed to laugh when a movie deals with racism (which is ridiculous), and also because some moments of light humour do mask the darkness at the heart of what’s happening. For example, there’s a moment when Minny picks up a stick to protect herself from a man she believes may be about to beat and/or kill her (and this being early 60s Mississippi would do so with impunity). It’s a bit disturbing really, but the movie plays it so lightly that the truth of the situation – that a woman’s everyday reality could be to genuinely think she could be murdered for doing the job she’s been hired for – doesn’t quite hit home. It’s an occasional problem of tone really, but there are moments when the film does seem to treading lighter than it needs to, and in its effort to ensure it’s entertaining loses touch with the truth of that’s it’s dealing with. Most of the time though it does manage to keep the tone light but with enough respect for the truth that it works well.

The Help may not be perfect but it is perhaps the movie we need – a film with enough mainstream appeal to ensure a big audience (even if that means not really getting right down into the dark heart of segregation), who will get exposed to issues they probably rarely think about. If The Help causes some of these people to do a bit more research and find out more about the truth of what happened before, during and after the civil rights movement, then it’s done its job. Indeed just the fact that film will cause debate about its representation of a dark period in the recent past, has to count for something.

Overall Verdict: It may have its flaws, but The Help also has a big heart, wonderful performances and works as a decent primer to the immensely complex issues surrounding the everyday reality of segregation.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac