- 9
...a masterful emotional epic with equal parts crowd-pleasing joy and shattering, complex pain.
—Jason McKiernan filmcritic.com
- 8
...serves as an enlightening and deeply affecting exercise in empathy for those who've never considered what life must have been like for African-Americans living with inequality a full century after the Emancipation Proclamation called an end to slavery.
—Peter Debruge Variety
- 8
A deeply touching human story filled with humor and heartbreak...
—Peter Travers Rolling Stone
- 8
...a delicious peppery stew of home-cooked, 1960s Southern-style racism that serves up a soulful dish of what ails us and what heals us.
—Betsy Sharkey Los Angeles Times
- 7
...a handsome and largely admirable film adaptation...
—Andrew O'Hehir Salon
- 7
...fans of the best-selling novel can rest easy: The warmly engaging book has been made into an equally affecting movie.
—Claudia Puig USA Today
- 7
[Viola] Davis is reason No. 1 the film extracted from Kathryn Stockett's 2009 best-seller improves on its source material.
—Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune
- 7
...a good film, involving and wonderfully acted.
—Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times
- 7
...gets big help from its solid cast, namely Viola Davis.
—Matt Stevens E!
- 6
The Help is like a lot of Southern fare made with Crisco: you'll want to gobble it up, but it's not particularly nourishing.
—Sara Stewart New York Post
- 6
...too often feels like a civics lesson despite moments of nobility with stellar performances by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer.
—Peter Rainer Christian Science Monitor
- 5
...a self-conscious and self-congratulatory portrait of the Jim Crow South...
—Kirk Honeycutt Hollywood Reporter
- 5
...a fairly typical Hollywood flattening of history, with powerful villains and disenfranchised heroes.
—Karina Longworth Village Voice
- 3
Although the film treats the black characters' experiences as every bit as significant as those of their white counterparts, and while it at least partially condemns the system of debased servitude that represented the only career option for most of the city's black women, its attitude toward the whole racist setup reeks of a toned-down paternalism.
—Andrew Schenker Slant Magazine
- 3
...a big, ole slab of honey-glazed hokum.
—Manohla Dargis New York Times