Critic Reviews

The Help isn't intended to be so much a movie about the ugliness of the era than an optimistic tale of what can spring from that kind of ugliness, about the ability of people to love one another even when they're surrounded by hatred. And on that level, The Help succeeds wonderfully, a warm and sweet song of hope.

The Help has a saucy, humorous side.

Davis 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.

A 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.

The "black maid" may be a cliché. But when was the last time we saw a story told from her point of view?

A stirring black-empowerment tale aimed squarely at white audiences, The Help personalizes the civil rights movement through the testimony of domestic servants working in Jackson, Miss., circa 1963.

Laughter, which is ladled on thick as gravy, proves to be the secret ingredient - turning what should be a feel-bad movie about those troubled times into a heart-warming surprise.

The Help definitely worked on me as a consummate tear-jerker with a terrific cast, and it's pretty much the summer's only decent Hollywood drama.

Davis is reason No. 1 the film extracted from Kathryn Stockett's 2009 best-seller improves on its source material.

This is 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, a story that deals with pain but doesn't care to be that painful.