Guest Post: The Help (Book to Movie Review)

We would like to thank our friend Abby for bailing us out on this book to movie review! She fits right in here at ISRBR... mother of 4, avid reader and dessert extraordinaire (although, Kelli and myself are more into taste testing sweets versus creating them)!               ~Natalie

The Help is one of my favorite books so I could not wait to see it on the big screen!   Anytime a book is turned into a movie, there’s a lot of pressure for it to be how we envisioned it while reading the book.  Fortunately, the movie lived up to the book!  There were no major changes and it followed closely with the book.

Normally when I hate a book to movie, the casting is to blame.  I really think they did a phenomenal job casting The Help.  Emma Stone as Skeeter was spot on.  My one gripe is her hair.  It was too pretty.  Skeeter’s crazy frizzball mess of hair played a major part in who she was, so for them to give her pretty hair was puzzling to me.  Kathryn Stockett based the character of Minny on the actress who played her in the movie, so Minny of course was superb!  I do wish a little more of Celia’s story was shown in the movie.  Her storyline was one of my favorites in the book.  Jessica Chastain embodied the ditzy naive Celia perfectly.  I also wanted to see more of her interaction with Minny.  Bryce Dallas Howard as Hilly was perfection.  I hated that snotty girl even more on screen.   She makes me want to cuss!  I’d like to feed her the whole dang pie!  I loved seeing Aibileen with the adorable Mae Mobley, but there weren’t nearly enough scenes with them together.  Now my one serious, serious gripe is the casting of Constantine’s daughter.  I can’t figure out why they would change a detail so important as her skin color, especially within the context of this particular book.  Overall though, it was a great movie!

I will definitely watch this movie again when it comes out on DVD.

                                  Abby