62
Metascore
41 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 88Orlando SentinelRoger MooreOrlando SentinelRoger MooreDavis and Spencer give faces and fully-fleshed out lives to women who must have been more than what they did for a living as The Help.
- 88Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversA deeply touching human story filled with humor and heartbreak is rare in any movie season, especially summer. That's what makes The Help an exhilarating gift.
- 75Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsChicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDavis is reason No. 1 the film extracted from Kathryn Stockett's 2009 best-seller improves on its source material.
- 70The New YorkerDavid DenbyThe New YorkerDavid DenbyThe Help is, in some way, crude and obvious, but it opens up a broad new swath of experience on the screen, and 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. [15 & 22 August 2011, p. 96]
- 70Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzArizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzThe acting is uniformly excellent, and the cause - dragging the beginnings of civil rights into Jackson, Miss., at great risk - couldn't be nobler. What the film lacks is a strong point of view.
- 63Boston GlobeWesley MorrisBoston GlobeWesley MorrisThe movie is too pious for farce and too eager to please to comment persuasively on the racial horrors of the Deep South at that time.
- 60The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttTaylor does capture the Jim Crow era and its anxieties well, but his characters tend toward the facile and his white heroine is too idealized.
- 40Boxoffice MagazineSara Maria VizcarrondoBoxoffice MagazineSara Maria VizcarrondoA chick flick for do-gooders, The Help suffers from a malady common to the discrimination drama: its treatment of inequality is more condescending than the prejudice it aims to remedy.
- 25Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerSlant MagazineAndrew SchenkerHigh school creative-writing-class ironies of all kinds abound in The Help.