DVDFile

Buena Vista / 142 Minutes / 2011 / Rated PG-13 / Street Date: December 6, 2011

As an historical document, a dramatic capturing of a time and place when the legislation of the civil rights movement was moving from conceptualization to implementation, The Help is a ludicrous, rose-tinted two-and-a-half-hour cliche. As a movie, though, it's a resounding thrill, a melodrama that takes a modern girl-power attitude and uses it to turn one woman's attempt to dissolve the racism in her community into an endlessly evocative (and weepy) film.

Our barometer at the center of The Help is a young lady named Skeeter (Emma Stone) who is inspired to write the histories of the black maids in her neck of the woods. It quickly turns out, though, that getting any kind of interview scenarios with these women is near-impossible: They might lose their job if they're too indiscreet about the information they might give this impassioned young whippersnapper.

Skeeter's quest starts to take on some traction with Aibileen (Viola Davis) enters the picture, recognizing the importance that a chronicle like Skeeter's might hold for both the people in her town and future generations of women. As sub-plots and various maid/Mrs. connections are forged and challenged, The Help takes on a positively Sirkian dramatic enthusiasm: With fantastic actors (Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain round out the first-string cast), and lush, inviting production design, The Help ends up being more emotionally rapturous than most other films this year.

But while The Help is able to connect in an immediate dramatic fashion, it's the kind of movie that dissipates after its final credits roll. It's not incumbent on every film that takes place in the 1960s south to undertake every element of the racial issues of the time, but while The Help works as a chamber piece of sorts, it fails in terms of any kind of historical believability. Perhaps this doesn't matter - the movie is wonderfully successful within its own little bubble - but it nevertheless prevents the picture from being as definitive and imperative as it could be.