Insert Lord of the Rings joke here


Image Courtesy of IMPawards.com

Director: Lee Daniels
Notable Cast: Gabby Sidibe, Mo’Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz

The art of the con is something we see in every spectrum in every sort of media. Politicians con us into thinking they believe in one thing, and yet don’t. Musicians talk about the love of the music when seducing women is all they seek with their guitars. And movies can con us into thinking their good when they are nothing but pretentious, self-serving drivel. Precious falls into that category of “the other side of the tracks” tale about life in American poverty meant to shed insight into Middle America about that experience.

Based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire, a “poet” for whom this remains her only published work, the film follows the title character (Gabby Sidibe) and her markedly awful life in the ghetto of late 1980s Harlem. Pregnant with her second child by her father, she’s thrown out of school and put into an alternative one with a kind new teacher (Paula Patton) to help her get a GED. But it’s not an easy path with an abusive mother (Mo’Nique) sponging off of welfare to take care of. And with all the accolades the film has been getting, on the surface it appears to be this year’s “independent film that could” ala Little Miss Sunshine and Juno.

The problem is that both of those films are iconic masterpieces worthy of inclusion into the AFI Top 100 in comparison to Precious. And it mainly rests on the hands of two women who are going to be nominated for Oscars this year based on the sheer volume of hype, as opposed to the substance of their performances.

Sidibe, who has been getting high accolades for her role (her big screen debut, matter of fact) as the title character, is perhaps on her way to be the worst actress to be nominated for an Oscar. Precious isn’t a fully realized character we can get behind or at least understand, it’s a two note dinner theatre performance that rotates between dumb and innocent. Mo’Nique, on the other hand, just reverts to an old acting trick (comedian plays it straight) for her performance. Her performance rotates between crazy and evil, nothing more, and the fact that she can wear a do-rag while crying doesn’t lend her any gravitas nor does it give her any depth to her performance. It is easy to be abusive as an actor in a parental role. It is what one does with it that gives it weight. Mo’Nique doesn’t do anything with it, nor does the film require her to. As her level of violence escalates towards her daughter there’s no real rhyme or reason to it. It’s just there to exist in the story, nothing more, and if excised from it would not take away anything from it.

It doesn’t help that the film is filled with the sort of ghetto clichés made famous in rap songs. Daniels takes the idea of the ghetto and turns into a series of aggressive cruelty by all involved and goes even further by stereotyping most of its supporting characters into thinner, one note “ghetto” clichés. Her classmates (for example) have no purpose on screen but to fill an archetype of students in a “special needs” type of course, as opposed to being more fully developed characters. Even a smidgen of development, or perhaps even going outside the box and giving more then just ethnic clichés and characters out of a high school production of Dangerous Minds, could make it more subtle at least.

Compare this to 2006’s similar tale, Sherrybaby, which featured Maggie Gyllenhaal in a similar position. Both were heavy-handed attempts at Oscar bait for those involved and that’s ultimately what this is. It’s the ghetto version of a Holocaust film, deliberately playing certain cards because it has to not because its part of the story. For all of the hype and producers’ pedigree behind Precious, it is crass exploitation at its absolute worst and unintentional comedy at its best.

Tags: Gabby Sidibe, Lee Daniels, Lenny Kravitz, Mariah Carey, Mo'Nique, Paula Patton, Precious, sapphire