Movie Review: Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire

THREE THINGS I LIKED:

1. I DO BELIEVE THE PERFORMANCE FROM MO'NIQUE IS THE BEST FROM ANY 2009 FILM I'VE SEEN SO FAR — Under any other circumstances, I might have found a line like "I should've aborted your dumb ass" as being too cheap to be believable. But as the welfare-cheating mother to 16-year-old Claireece Precious Jones, the physical and verbal abuse excessively doled out over the course of the film ultimately takes a back seat to Mo'Nique's flat-out stunning climactic monologue, a remarkably killer scene that trumped my initial fear that the character would ultimately be too cartoonish in nature. Gabourey Sidibe is also genuinely effecting as Precious, and Lee Daniels gets sincere efforts from the rest of his cast, most notable being surprisingly lower-key turns from both Lenny Kravitz and Mariah Carey than I would have expected.
   
2. THE MOVIE IS SET IN 1987, YET STILL FEELS TIMELY — The film incorporates TV images of Ronald Reagan and Oliver North as a reminder, but when Precious takes part in an alternative education program called Each One Teach One, the film makes us look at both the positive and negative effect of government policies. The actual book was published the same year of Bill Clinton's welfare reform, but in all honesty, I couldn't say that many of the settings for the low-income life lived by those in Precious didn't seem a lot like what I imagine them being today.
3. THE FILM IS A LOT LIKE ITS TITLE CHARACTER ... — ... In that it's truly big in spirit and filled with hope. I'm not entirely sure that the message of redemption resonated as much with me as it did for, say, Oprah, but I can at least applaud the sincerity of the effort.

THREE THINGS I DIDN'T:

1. THE FILM IS A LOT LIKE ITS TITLE CHARACTER ... — ... In that the viewer could be forgiven for feeling like one of the supporting characters Precious physically overpowers with tremendous ease. The movie's about an overweight teenage girl, but that seems to be a convenient excuse to be overly heavy-handed.
   
2. KEEPING IN MIND WHAT I SAID ABOUT A SERIOUS MAN, THIS IS PILING ON THE WRONG WAY — In a comedy, such extreme amounts of individual hardship can add to the humor. But in Precious, the excess misery for an already disadvantaged black teenager with a bitch of a mother almost makes the adversity comical too. Precious isn't just grotesquely overweight, she's also pregnant with her second child—both of them having been the result of being raped by her father. Oh, and that first child has Down Syndrome. And did I mention the HIV-positive plot twist? Yeah, that would have been a plot spoiler if deep down I hadn't been suspecting that there would be one more obstacle that would inevitably be thrown into the mix.
3. STOP TRYING TO BE SO STYLISH — For as much as I admired the quality of the performances Lee Daniels got out of his cast, there were other decisions of his that were regrettable instances of directorial overkill. Whatever themes were being hinted at are inevitably certain to be spelled out for the viewer like, for instance, a rape flashback cutting to a shot of breakfast sizzling in grease on the stove. But perhaps most irritating were the recurring dream sequences Precious has in which she envisions herself glammed up and being photographed on red carpets or in music videos. Whether the intention of these totally needless scenes is to criticize the escapist fantasies of modern America or just to use the fish-out-of-water imagery of an obese black female teen being the subject of paparazzi photographs, Daniels totally misses the mark.

25 WORDS OR LESS:

Positively or negatively, the one thing Precious is certain to do is make you uncomfortable.