Quickcard Review - Chicago International Film Festival Review Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Directed by: Lee Daniels Cast: Gabourey Sidibe, Mo'Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey Running Time: 1 hr 45 mins Rating: R Release Date: November 6, 2009
PLOT: An overweight 16-year-old girl (Sidibe) struggles to keep her life together while living with her abusive mother (Mo'Nique) and attending a school of alternative education.
WHO'S IT FOR? Anyone whose curiosity has been peaked by the buzz. Despite not being a great film, Precious is likely to become one of the more talked about pictures of 2009. For those who are unfamiliar with the film, I'd recommend checking out it's trailer first.
OVERALL
While Precious ventures down paths darker than anything executive producer Tyler Perry has traveled himself so far, the film still chooses to bombard its audience with heavy emotional elements that would work by themselves, but here in this super sized emotional knuckle sandwich of melodrama, they just don’t. When a character is a rape victim, an extremely overweight pregnant teenager, the mother of a child with down syndrome, and the daughter to an extremely abusive mother who lacks one loving bone in her body, she’s either the most unfortunate human being in the entire world, or just the concoction of more filmmaking that still doesn’t think the world is ready for … reality. The bombardment that Precious unleashes to create such dramatic circumstances especially doesn’t float well when the character’s misfortunes are piled on like plot devices – her pregnancy and first child are only mentioned when convenient to the drama. It is difficult to feel so much for Precious when robots tend to be given more tangible back-stories.
Every dark corner of Precious is too set-up, including the Oscar-reel monologues that spew out of the mouth of Mo’Nique. With this too careful construction comes Lee Daniels’ cornball fantasy imagery, which includes a music video, a black and white scene from an Italian film, and even some talking yearbook pictures. These unnecessary choices almost entirely vanquish the hopes of Precious to be chewed on as mirror of the real world.
What sets Precious apart from other ghetto-based movies that try to bring the streets to the "film" crowd is the acting. Gabourey Sidibe, who plays the title character, does a more than decent job in presenting the silent fear of the delicate girl. But the best element comes from Mariah Carey, who inherits her role as a social worker with little pizzazz and in turn asks for little attention. She shakes off her Glitter looks and works a New York accent quite well – she deserves the most praise for providing something legitimate.
The hype behind this film is astounding. Its decent performances are only baby steps for the genre, even if this film did well at Sundance and the Toronto International Film Festival. Hopefully the sparkle of a "Tyler Perry movie gone dramatic with less singing and more edge" will fade away before it has to compete with films that are more believable and special. Should Precious find its way to one of the ten Best Picture spots, it should consider itself lucky.
FINAL SCORE: 5/10