The Help balances the three lead voices wonderfully and molds a book-within-a-book plot that delivers as many tears as it does laughs.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 17, 2024

As a piece of entertainment, it works. As a historical document, its contents are too sanitized in an effort to avoid inflaming old tensions and that mutes its impact.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 10, 2023

While the narrative includes Black characters’ perspectives, the writing holds them at a distance, not providing more in-depth character development overall.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 6, 2023

This is a film that will expose you to horrible truths about a not-too-distant past and, in the end, makes you laugh and feel like there’s a happy ending, except there isn’t one. Not really.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 9, 2023

The Help, a likely Best Picture nominee, has one of the best ensembles of the year.

| Feb 11, 2022

"The Help" will make you laugh, cry, and contemplate how far we've come as a society, how much has radically changed since the 1960s and, given our current racial climate, reflect on how much more progress we need.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 26, 2022

This movie is slick and mainstream; it's also funny and sweet, dramatic and pointed.

| Mar 24, 2021

An uplifting, feel-good movie.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 30, 2020

The Help works beautifully as an entertaining film about a troubling period in American history and the people who were impacted by it.

| Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 10, 2020

Abruptly ending and slightly overlong it may be, the performances from the three female leads and the authenticity of the setting covers the cracks in an otherwise charming film.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 11, 2019

As perfect as a sipping a cold glass of sweet tea on a sweltering summer afternoon, TheHelp quenches your thirst for a perfect movie experience.

| Nov 26, 2019

It's beautiful to both look at and watch.

| Jul 26, 2019

A fun, satisfying and often quite moving summer movie for grown-ups.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 8, 2019

Wants to have a say about some serious subjects while at the same time appealing to the masses. To its credit, The Help succeeds more on the latter than it does the former, leaving a somewhat effective drama that could have been much more.

| May 7, 2019

Yes it has drawn some criticism for not being authentic enough in depicting the painful disparity, but in putting rarely heard voices on screen and telling it in a story as regonisable as this, The Help deserves only praise.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 29, 2019

The Help succeeds is because even though there are triumphs, they're not easy-and the spectacularly strong cast takes it to the level it needs to be at so it's believable and not cheesy.

| Mar 5, 2019

There's a luscious attention to paid to period detail, with brightly colored frocks and subdued homes. Yet the film itself is rather black and white, keeping it from being an unalloyed artistic success.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 8, 2019

The film has its moments of twee sentimentalism, but also resonates with a clear sense of poignancy, and is told in an accessible and hugely pleasurable way.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2018

The Help is a somewhat light-hearted take on the relations between black maids and their bosses in 1960s Mississippi, giving a simplified yet well-intended story of Kathryn Stockett’s novel for the big screen.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 24, 2018

"The Help" still serves as an uplifting reminder of how compassion, courage, empathy and honesty have helped change the world.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 8, 2018