No Happy Meal

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

Crit

As with Lars von Trier's Antichrist, which I took a pass on for its 2-week downtown run, I was resistant to this one because I feared it wouldn't give me enough back to compensate me for how lousy I'd feel coming out. It finally took a 24-for-27 Rotten Tomatoes Top Critics consensus to get me to the theater, and I gotta say, sometimes democracy is a very good idea.

Is it unrelentingly hellish? Pretty much, yeah; there's a little relenting, such as when the title character (played by the never-acted-before Gabourey Sidibe, who, at the risk of parroting even the 3 critics who didn't like the film, is remarkable) asks the social worker played by Mariah Carey (and who the hell knew she could act?) the question that has followed her for her whole career, "What kind of color are you, anyway?" But not very damned much relenting (though bizarrely, it got a whole lot of laughs at the most squirmy moments from a sizable segment of a sizable audience; would be interesting, but perhaps not safe, to converse with the people who thought it was a comedy).

But what makes it bearable--yes, even (must . . . steel . . . self . . . to . . . use . . . word) uplifting, is that the humanity relents even less than the hellishness. Great, believable performances across the board, led by Mo'Nique as the villain of the piece for whom your heart finally breaks; if she doesn't win every supporting actress award available, God didn't make pigs' feet and collards.

Speaking of which, I can sympathize with the protest that the film trades upon a host of ghetto stereotypes, but "trades upon" is not the same as "exploits." The bottom line is that the film takes no prisoners, and if that's not something to go to the movies for, what is? A teenage vampire abstinence flick?

Trailer

• Brothers--Oh, right! Just realized when I was grabbing the IMDb link why this looks so familiar! It's a remake of the gripping 2004 Danish film Brødre, directed by Susanne Bier. This one is directed by Jim Sheridan (who, omigod, has a production of I, Claudius in production!) and stars Natalie Portman as the short side of the fraternal triangle, with Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal finally cast as the brothers we've thought they looked like all along. Question is, can you make this work without Denmark, which was a dark, cold character in the original.