The Help

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From the book of the same name by Kathryn Stockett.

The lives of African-American domestic help and the women who employ them in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 60s and the Civil Rights movement.

Our book and movie discussion group picked this, and I am so glad. The book was WONDERFUL, I buzzed through it in a day and a half and loved it. As did Mr. Otter.

The movie was good; they hit all the high points, and the things that were changed were changed intelligently.

The actors were good, although Emma Stone was WAY too pretty to be believeable as Skeeter.

The setting was good (except for Skeeter using Liquid Paper in her typewriter*) and evoked the feeling of the early 60s very nicely.

Not my usual sort of movie, but enjoyable, well done, and fun to watch in the group.

But the book was better.

*Remotely possible, since Betty Naismith started selling it from her house in Texas in 1962 and by 1968 it was pretty well known. But since the major action of the movie is 1963…not likely. It would have been better if she had used correction tape instead. Says the Otter, who is indeed old enough to have used typewriters…and hated them.