Friday, August 12, 2011

The Help

Finally. Finally! My faith in movies based on best-selling novels has been restored. Well, not completely restored. Little Women pretty much made that an impossibility (I expected more from you Mr. Bale). But, The Help, is slowly but surely bringing me back.

I can’t adequately express my anticipation for this movie. But it was anticipation laced with a bit (or more) of trepidation. I read The Help last year (and again this summer), and loved it. We’re talking, moved it up to my Top 5 Favorite Reads list loved it. I heart that story. Hard. With all that love, though, comes a price. That price is a $6 matinee movie ticket. Any hard core reader/movie lover out there knows that you can pretty much count on one hand the number of movies based on hugely popular novels that have been anything shy of utter disappointment at the box office. Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE movies. But, it’s tough to convey all a book has to offer in 120 minutes. –All Harry Potter fans can just pipe down right now. I’ve heard that the movies are amazing. That the visuals are stunning. The movies make you glad to be alive. Etc. Quite simply, I don’t care. You will never get me to watch an HP movie. So stop trying.—Having loved the book The Help as much as I did, I went into the movie hoping for the best, expecting the worst, and for once I got what I wanted.

I’m not going to pretend the movie was as good as the novel. It wasn’t. But if you’re expecting it to be you need to reevaluate your expectations in life ‘cause it may be a rough road. The movie was, though, everything I hoped it would be. I loved Aibileen, I hated Hilly, I wanted to be Skeeter. I laughed out loud, cried (though I didn’t admit it at the time since my sister made fun of my mom for tearing up), and completely loved it. Don’t judge my sister too harshly, my mom is an incredibly loud crier. Real sniffly.

And though it’s a bit corn dog, one other bit I loved about the movie was the company I saw it with. I got to go with my mom and Holly. And trying to fit a movie into our three schedules was nothing short of ridiculous, but it was worth it. They are two of my favorite chicks in the whole world even though one of them goes through an entire Kleenex pack and the other sings along with the soundtrack.

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