I used to think that the screenwriters for "Million Dollar Baby" sat down and decided "lets make the most depressing movie ever about a single person." Precious easily cancelled out whatever meeting those people had. Anything that could happen to this girl in 1980's Harlem happened on the most grand of scales.
Precious is a 16 year old repeat middle school-er who is overweight and pregnant with her second child by her own father, the first born suffers from down syndrome and has been banished from their home by Precious's mother. Precious lives at home in a small apartment in Harlem with her mother (Mo'nique) where they consume massive amounts of soul food for what seems like every single meal. Her mother is unemployed and scamming the welfare system (by claiming Precious and Precious's first born daughter) to sustain herself while she watches tv all day alone. Precious attends school during the day where she is tormented by students for her size and then goes home to be verbally, physically and sexually abused by her mother and a father that has left the household but is seen briefly in graphic abuse scenes. Her life takes a turn for the "better" when she is sent to an alternative school and begins to learn to read and write. For once in her life she meets a teacher and peers who are her true friends and love her, all of which is nice and heartwarming but as a viewer we are quickly jolted out of that and thrown back into her home where in one scene she is almost decapitated practically by her mother wielding a frying pan. To say that this is not the feel good movie of the year is an understatement. There is never a point during this film that I felt I could breath a sigh of relief for Precious, because in the back of your mind you know this girl is totally screwed. Granted, there are some funny moments caught in Precious's classmates especially Joanna who I quoted for the title of this post. Hilarious.
The performance by newcomer Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe was great, I saw her in interviews a few weeks ago and to see the transformation between her and her character is pretty amazing. Mo'nique is seen as we have never seen her before, she has always been a graphic loud mouthed comedian, in this case she is loud, angry, disgruntled, and abusive in every way possible. She was terrifying to be honest. I would not be surprised if both or at least one of them is nominated for this years Oscar's, seeing how Mo'nique will react to that will be interesting considering her bad attitude and demands for money could be jeopardizing such prestigious nominations. According to her she was only in this movie for money and didnt care about "no Oscars". She has also opted out of all promotional duties for the film because Lionsgate and the films producers Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey will not go along with her $100,000 appearance fees.
The film is more graphic than I originally anticipated, I went into the movie knowing what was contained in the book but a New York Times article led me to believe that the sexual abuse scenes would not be shown in their entirety. They werent but more was seen than expected.
*SPOILERS* We learn that Precious is pregnant by her absent father for a second time, the first child has down syndrome and is forced to live with a relative away from Precious and her mother. We never learn the girls real name, only that they refer to her as an animal or "Mongol" short for mongoloid. On top of being raped by her father and having spawned two children from incest, she is also forced to perform sexual acts on her mother. I was not prepared to see this as I had thought I read earlier that this aspect was not in the film. With all of this on her plate, she eventually comes to find out that her father has AIDS and that she now does as well, luckily her baby does not.
Overall the performances are great from two new and unsuspecting actresses, but proceed with caution, this will no doubt bring anyone's mood down.
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