I loved the acting and liked the script.

If I’ve ever seen a less morally challenging movie, I can’t remember it. The audience sees the problems The Help depicts at a safe distance: in Jackson, Mississippi; many decades ago; and perpetrated by plainly damaged people in old-fashioned haircuts.

Indeed, you can tell just how bad someone is in this movie by their hair. The villains all have outdated period hairstyles. Emma Stone’s character has hair that would fit in today at just about any dinner party in the country. Allison Janney’s character, perhaps the only morally ambiguous character in the script, tends to have hair that’s somewhere in between. (And in a crucial scene, when she declares herself to be a sort of moral blank between courageous generations, her hair is concealed.) The Black women wear their hair in ways that reflects their good taste, domestic skill, and oppression. And so on.

I enjoyed the movie. I wouldn’t want every movie I see to be as comfortable as this one, though.