Wow. Viola Davis is a shoe-in for Best Actress this year. Oh wait, Merryl Streep is in a movie. Oh well.

The Help appears to do something that most movies can’t accurately do, make me appreciate and understand what it was like to be in someone else’s shoes. And not just someone else, but someone extremely else. It’s the same reason I love Changes by 2 Pac, even though he stole my boy’s melody. And yes, Bruce Hornsby is my boy. You know he beat Allen Iverson in three one-on-one basketball games in a row? Pretty cool for a three-time Grammy award winner.

Emma Stone, in her least bangable role to date, plays a rare educated woman in the south who aspires to be a writer of some sort. She sees the coloreds as equals. So we know she’s one of the good folks. Bryce Dallas Howard, who just made us all hate her in 50/50, is at it again. And we hate her even more this time. Of course it’s not too hard to play the role of villain when you’re asked to be a racist bitch.

Emma turns to Viola to help (that’s really how the film got its name) with her cleaning advice column. Then she gets the idea to write a book from the perspective of the help (or maybe it was that). To most of us modern day folk who didn’t experience overt racism on that kind of a scale, it’s tough to understand the mindset of slavery back then. But this comes from a time period where they didn’t think smoking was bad for you either. So let’s just say we know better now and move on.

There are some very moving scenes, some very funny scenes and some very predictable ones too. It’s worthy of the Best Picture nom, but not the win. Well done once again, Academy. But it still doesn’t make up for that Tree of Life bullshit. 7.5 bugs (out of 10).