Ok, Observations on the movie "Precious"? [Spoilers] and request for opinions

from Elemental Forums

My 17 year old son said it was awesome and my wife wanted to watch it, so it took 3 freaking days of visiting the local $1 a day box to get it. Which of course, meant when we stated to watch it after 8pm yesterday. my 8 year old daughter decided to want to come downstairs and hang out with us while we watched the movie. So, obviously, we stopped the movie because it is definitely R rated.

So after tucking my daughter back into bed, we watched it on my laptop in the bedroom instead.  I didn't think it was that good. My problems:

1) Other than Job, who had more shit thrown at her? I mean serious? All that was missing was she took in a stray dog and it was killed under really mean, not unfortunate, mean circumstance. Perhaps served to her as dinner as well.

2) A LOT of cliches in the environment.

3) She is smart, but 16 and in jr. high... in a bad school... and cannot read... ok... I have known folks in bad neighborhoods that couldn't read well, at least they could read "at"!

4) Her mom let's her get molested at 3, FREAKING THREE, and blames the daughter for stealing her man? I get the mom is nuts thing, but come on. Including mental and physical abuse on the daughter, yet the father is never shown, but he is the father of the babies she has? Why would the mother put up with it if he wasn't there either financially or otherwise for the mother, even if she was nuts?

5) No one figured out after all the above, yet somehow the clairvoyant VP of the school brings her into the office and asks her if she is pregnant. I mean, it must be obvious that a normal height 16 year old who weighs 300+ lbs is in the early stages of pregnancy. You could not figure out if she could READ, but you know she is knocked up. Her mom can hit her with books, frying pans, beat and slap her, but no one notices swollen lips or bruises or changes in her attitude. Even though the school, teachers, and social worker never had a clue, the alternative school teacher and welfare clerk figure it all out from there. 

For me, it just keeps spiralling down from there. There are some good performances, some decent dialog at times, but really, this is so not close to a really good, much less great movie. It was written in a way to just make you bleed your heart out, but it was just too much suspension of disbelief for me and I couldn't buy in.

Feel free to throw down on me.

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Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I thought they had some awesome material to work with, but didn't go into enough character development.  I thought I would cry when I watched it, from the previews, but I found it hard to feel anything for any of the characters, as they all seemed a little 2-dimensional.  I was disappointed.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Oh wow, that is sad. Sounds like a wasted opportunity.

Movies that seriously deal with social issues are not as common as they used to be. It's sad that these movies suffer from obvious plots holes. It's also sad that script writers nowadays can't be bothered to simply revise plots to fix them, when it is really a very simple thing to do. I mean, really. Are they so pressed for time for that they can't go back and rewrite them?

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top


My 17 year old son said it was awesome and my wife wanted to watch it, so it took 3 freaking days of visiting the local $1 a day box to get it. Which of course, meant when we stated to watch it after 8pm yesterday. my 8 year old daughter decided to want to come downstairs and hang out with us while we watched the movie. So, obviously, we stopped the movie because it is definitely R rated.

So after tucking my daughter back into bed, we watched it on my laptop in the bedroom instead.  I didn't think it was that good. My problems:

1) Other than Job, who had more shit thrown at her? I mean serious? All that was missing was she took in a stray dog and it was killed under really mean, not unfortunate, mean circumstance. Perhaps served to her as dinner as well.

2) A LOT of cliches in the environment.

3) She is smart, but 16 and in jr. high... in a bad school... and cannot read... ok... I have known folks in bad neighborhoods that couldn't read well, at least they could read "at"!

4) Her mom let's her get molested at 3, FREAKING THREE, and blames the daughter for stealing her man? I get the mom is nuts thing, but come on. Including mental and physical abuse on the daughter, yet the father is never shown, but he is the father of the babies she has? Why would the mother put up with it if he wasn't there either financially or otherwise for the mother, even if she was nuts?

5) No one figured out after all the above, yet somehow the clairvoyant VP of the school brings her into the office and asks her if she is pregnant. I mean, it must be obvious that a normal height 16 year old who weighs 300+ lbs is in the early stages of pregnancy. You could not figure out if she could READ, but you know she is knocked up. Her mom can hit her with books, frying pans, beat and slap her, but no one notices swollen lips or bruises or changes in her attitude. Even though the school, teachers, and social worker never had a clue, the alternative school teacher and welfare clerk figure it all out from there. 

For me, it just keeps spiralling down from there. There are some good performances, some decent dialog at times, but really, this is so not close to a really good, much less great movie. It was written in a way to just make you bleed your heart out, but it was just too much suspension of disbelief for me and I couldn't buy in.

Feel free to throw down on me.

 

Ok I have a feeling you don't really understand the difference between the real world and a story narrative.

 

1) Yes? How is this a bad thing? How is this a hallmark of a bad movie?

2) Like?

3) She is not smart. She is sent to a "special" school. So you get angry at the nonexistent person because they can't read? Don't you like get that that is the point of the whole movie? That these people are wasted due to the enviroment they live in.

4) Again. How is this bad? Are movie producers bad people because they show bad things in the movies?

5) Now this is a real critique of the film. 

 

 

Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I have a feeling you don't really understand the difference between the real world and a story narrative.


The movie was based on a book (Push) which was written by a person who had been a teacher to girls like Precious, and had based the main character on her students. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120176695

One of these days I'm going to have to read the book...books tend to be better than the movies based on them.  Perhaps the main character will seem fully human if I read the book.

Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Literally ROFLMAO!!!  :rofl:

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top


 



Ok I have a feeling you don't really understand the difference between the real world and a story narrative.

 

1) Yes? How is this a bad thing? How is this a hallmark of a bad movie?

2) Like?

3) She is not smart. She is sent to a "special" school. So you get angry at the nonexistent person because they can't read? Don't you like get that that is the point of the whole movie? That these people are wasted due to the enviroment they live in.

4) Again. How is this bad? Are movie producers bad people because they show bad things in the movies?

5) Now this is a real critique of the film. 

  

Well, don't trust your feelings, Luke.

1) If you want to make a supposedly realistic point of something, at least have it be believable. As k10w3 noted, the writer based it on her students. It would have been better served to spread out the misery than lump it all into one character. It isn't that these things don't happen, but all that on one person? You are riding the sympathy horse pretty hard there.

2) Have you ever worked with kids in a bad neighborhood? I have and most didn't act the way that pretty much all the characters in this movie do. Perhaps stereotypical would have been a better description.

3) I know environment can destroy potential, but it was all carelessly presented IMO.  She supposedly in a few months she goes from not recognizing sight words kindergartners learn, to an 8th grade level? That would indicate a rather high intelligence. She was also decent at math. The only reason she was sent to the special school was because she was pregnant, not because she was dumb.

4) I don't see where you get that idea. I enjoyed Shawshank Redemption, The Usual Suspects, 7, Schindler's List and several others where "bad things" happen. Their job is to make me suspend disbelief. They failed.

The reason I posted was to get other people's opinions that saw the movie, not write a full on review. As I said, perhaps I missed something. It was trying to get a point across with a sledgehammer.

 It was like reading the unabridged "The Stand" where it is hundreds of pages of going to a town, dead bodies and crazy people, going to a another town, dead bodies and crazy people, going to a another town, dead bodies and crazy people. Rinse and repeat.  

 

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

The poster is pretty funny. Although I feel Gollum's backstory and character were more interesting.;)