Thoughts about The Help

The movie version of Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel opens today, I believe.  My mom gave me this book last year, and I read and enjoyed it.  There were some interesting writing techniques too--Stockett uses three different first person narrators, which I found entertaining but some people apparently found annoying due to the dialect she employs.  I recommend it for a fun read, but it's not the Best Book Ever and I think it was way over-hyped.

The plot is that a young white woman in the South interviews several local black maids about what it's really like to be them and work in white ladies' houses (not naming names of course).  The story follows her difficulties getting the book written and the controversy it causes when she publishes it.  Spoiler alert: it's mostly uplifting.

There's a lot of jibber jabber floating around about whether or not The Help is politically correct (see this article on Slate for a nice summary of the various opinions).  It does bother me when white people seem to drop in to save the day for black people in popular fiction/movies (see The Blind Side for another example).  But, as Slate says, you can argue that that's not exactly the situation here, which leaves me free and clear to be really excited to see this movie.  I'm getting good vibes from all the actresses (Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard) and it seems be holding strong in the 70s on Rotten Tomatoes.

So who wants to go see it with me?