The Help (2011)

Yes. 89% of real audiences liked it based on 8,908 votes. Critics scored it lower at 68%, but audiences disagreed.

Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines. Wikipedia ↗

The Help is a 2011 American period drama directed by Tate Taylor, based on Kathryn Stockett's 2009 bestselling novel. Set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963, the film follows Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, played by Emma Stone, an aspiring journalist who secretly interviews the city's Black maids about their experiences working for white families. Aibileen Clark, played by Viola Davis, and Minny Jackson, played by Octavia Spencer, risk their safety and livelihoods to tell their stories, which Skeeter compiles into a book that exposes the daily humiliations and injustices of domestic service in the Jim Crow South.

Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer delivered performances of remarkable emotional power — Davis's Aibileen radiated quiet dignity and barely contained grief over the children she had raised for white families who would grow up to treat Black women exactly as their parents did, while Spencer's Minny brought fierce humor and defiance that made her the film's most crowd-pleasing character. Octavia Spencer won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and Davis was nominated for Best Actress. The film earned $216 million worldwide on a $25 million budget.

The Help generated significant debate about whether stories of Black experience during the civil rights era should be told through the lens of a white protagonist, a criticism that the filmmakers and Stockett herself acknowledged.