The Help
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: August 10, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
62
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
15
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottAug 9, 2011
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. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanAug 10, 2011
The Help has a saucy, humorous side. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversAug 9, 2011
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. Read full review
88
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreAug 8, 2011
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. Read full review
85
MovielineStephanie ZacharekAug 10, 2011
The "black maid" may be a cliché. But when was the last time we saw a story told from her point of view? Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'HehirAug 9, 2011
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. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyAug 9, 2011
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. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeAug 8, 2011
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. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliFeb 3, 2012
The Help's most apparent flaw is a tendency to paint with broad strokes. With only a few exceptions, it avoids shades of gray. Read full review
75
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallAug 10, 2011
It's a movie of terrific performances and rousing comeuppances, with a side order of corn pone for the soul. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldConnie OgleAug 10, 2011
The Help will make you laugh, yes, but it can also break your heart. In the dog days of August moviegoing, that's a powerful recommendation. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigAug 9, 2011
The Help sidesteps easy sentimentality. As the film's heart and soul, Davis and Spencer add vast reserves of depth and dignity to a crowd-pleasing tale. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleAmy BiancolliAug 9, 2011
Good story, great characters, a setting plucked from history - and a multiracial, multigenerational ensemble cast stacked with fabulous actresses. But the thing that makes The Help such a rousing crowd-pleaser is its generous helping of baked goods. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie RickeyAug 9, 2011
Like its characters, it has its faults. But overall, it is a movie of imaginative sympathy that gets into the skin of its characters, into their hearts, and, ultimately, into ours. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertAug 9, 2011
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. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 9, 2011
Davis is reason No. 1 the film extracted from Kathryn Stockett's 2009 best-seller improves on its source material. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternAug 11, 2011
Instead of plunging us into a racist past, however, The Help takes us on a pop-cultural tour that savors the picturesque, and strengthens stereotypes it purports to shatter. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 8, 2011
The 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. Read full review
70
The New YorkerDavid DenbyAug 8, 2011
The 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]
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerAug 9, 2011
It's a carefully manicured, almost genteel piece of moviemaking. The film is paradoxically both rousing and lulling. Read full review
65
NPRElla TaylorAug 12, 2011
Big hair, fine period frocks and interior design lend The Help a pleasingly retro look. Yet for someone who grew up in Mississippi, the director has little sense of place. Read full review
63
New York PostSara StewartAug 9, 2011
Director Tate Taylor is a childhood friend of Stockett and hasn't done much else, which may be why The Help feels clumsy but well-intentioned. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsAug 9, 2011
It's a credit to the cast and to the worthiness of the idea that this overlong movie works at all. But those of us who already know that racism is bad could use a little more challenge and a little less help. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisAug 9, 2011
The 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. Read full review
60
EmpireAnna SmithOct 24, 2011
A simplistic portrayal of historic race relations boosted by terrific performances from some of the best actresses working in Hollywood today. Sure, it's corny, but it mostly works. Read full review
60
TimeMary PolsAug 10, 2011
For every obvious turn The Help takes, there is Davis, the ideal counterweight. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinAug 10, 2011
It's a tough, beautifully judged performance (Davis) - it gives this too-soft movie a spine. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisAug 9, 2011
Save for Ms. Davis's, however, the performances are almost all overly broad, sometimes excruciatingly so, characterized by loud laughs, bugging eyes and pumping limbs. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttAug 8, 2011
Taylor does capture the Jim Crow era and its anxieties well, but his characters tend toward the facile and his white heroine is too idealized. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderBen SachsAug 11, 2011
As in many reductive period pieces, there are no real characters here, just archetypes, namely reactionary cretins and sensitive souls who anticipate modern attitudes. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesAug 10, 2011
The Help may be more interested in the moral at the end of the story than the story itself, but what saves the film from its meticulous one-dimensionality is that nuanced, deeply moving cast. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenAug 9, 2011
Typically, this sort of film is an earnest tear-jerker with moments of levity. Instead, what we have here is a raucous rib-tickler with occasional pauses for a little dramatic relief. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 9, 2011
As affectionately as Taylor has brought The Help to the screen, and as gratifying as it is to watch Davis and Spencer bring Aibileen and Minny to palpable, fully rounded life, their narrative, like "The Blind Side" a few years ago, is structured largely around their white female benefactor. Read full review
50
ObserverMeghan Keane Aug 9, 2011
If you can suspend your disbelief that a cute 22 year-old had the power to succeed with civil rights where Martin Luther King and President Kennedy failed, The Help actually has a lot to offer. Read full review
50
Village VoiceKarina LongworthAug 9, 2011
We get a fairly typical Hollywood flattening of history, with powerful villains and disenfranchised heroes. Read full review
40
SlateDana StevensAug 11, 2011
The Help is a high-functioning tearjerker, but the catharsis it offers feels glib and insufficient, a Barbie Band-Aid on the still-raw wound of race relations in America. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanAug 10, 2011
Emma Stone, for example, is no one's idea of an ugly duckling. And though she offers a sincere effort, she never quite settles into the role of Skeeter. Read full review
40
Time OutKeith UhlichAug 10, 2011
Spencer, a superb performer mainly known for small character parts, gives a star-making turn as the won't-take-no-guff Minny. Read full review
40
Boxoffice MagazineSara Maria VizcarrondoAug 9, 2011
A 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. Read full review
33
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasAug 10, 2011
The whole thing is rigged for crowd-pleasing payoffs - a bit about chocolate pie gets more mileage than a Prius - and those payoffs are about honoring white viewers for not being horrible racists. Kudos to them. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerAug 9, 2011
High school creative-writing-class ironies of all kinds abound in The Help. Read full review
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