Starring: Mo'Nique, Gabourey Sidibe, Mariah Carey, Paula Patton
Director: Lee Daniels
I have a rule I live by. I have to watch all the Best Picture nominees. It's just something I've done the past couple of years and I've held to it. I've tried to watch them all before the Oscars every year, but since they've expanded to ten, it's been tough. The only movies I haven't seen were this one (I refuse to write out the whole title ever again), The Blind Side and An Education. Out of those three, I really only was looking forward to the last. So it was with great dismay and much pulling of the teeth that I popped in the disc to see Mo'Nique's portrayal of a monster and her fugly turn to win an Oscar. And I'm still left wondering why this movie was a critical darling when I was left contemplating how ho-hum the story was.
If you haven't been told by the countless and depressing trailers, Precious is pregnant with her second child, of whom her own father is the man responsible. She's prepared to change her life, she just needs a little help from a fugged-out Mariah Carey and a lesbian teacher played by Paula Patton. It's not a long movie and the pacing is good - I just felt the whole time there wasn't any new lesson or anything at all, for that matter, to be gained from this movie. It's a story about rising out of the mess that one is born into. It's about overcoming fear and all that stuff. And all that is great - I just found it extremely dull and not at all entertaining. Because the first rule of movies is to entertain and I wasn't at all captivated by the story or by Mo'Nique's performance.
And although it is a powerful story in it's own right, it's just been heard before. I don't know, maybe I had already labeled this movie as a dud on arrival, but it didn't move me in the way that it has done for so many others. I'd skip it unless you like depressing and overcoming-the-odds type of movies.
Rating: Not Worth Paying For!
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