Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire Reviews and Ratings


  • ahmadmaria20
    November 23, 2009
    ahmadmaria20
    its realy ooooooooooooooosam ...........the true reality
  • loveyazin
    November 23, 2009
    loveyazin
    http://www.loveyazin.blogspot.com/
  • cenzano38
    November 23, 2009
    cenzano38
    Precious is an almost great film that has glaring problems. All are overshadowed by fantastic acting and a near perfectly cast group of actors (I'll get to that shortly). It's a movie I found that was a later addition to a few theaters in Phoenix.

    Not to sell it short, but when ...( read more)Precious is mentally escaping from something, they go to a ridiculous fantasy land that does nothing but harm what could be a near perfect movie. Toward the end, she is sitting by a young girl who is getting verbally beat down by her mother, and gives the girl a red scarf. Things like this made it so much more touching. Endearing. Like she gets to be the guardian angel of herself. Not to be. I hate getting on a soapbox about it, but it would make Precious a MUCH better movie (and I'll step down).

    Gabourey Sidibe plays Clareece "Precious" Jones, and I wouldn't have guessed that she had absolutely no acting experience before getting picked to lead this movie. Fantastic job. Lenny Kravitz has his onscreen debut as Nurse John, and does a good job in front of the camera. Hopefully he does more. Other actors, Paula Patton, Sherri Shepherd, amongst others give a strong performance. WHAT THE HELL IS MARIAH CAREY DOING IN THIS MOVIE? I know they wanted to put people in place to portray strong black women, but Mariah Carey? So many people could have done a better job. She just looked lost, and does not need to be acting. Pinkett-Smith? Halle Berry? No one else? Really? Ouch.

    GIVE MO'NIQUE THE OSCAR NOW!!! Powerful performance. Seeing this, you'd forget she's ever cracked a joke, let alone the fact that she is a very funny comedian. I don't care what movie is coming out between now and the new year, or who's acting in them. No one is going to give a performance this year as strong as Mo'nique. I can't say enough about how much she does to make this movie better than it would have been had she not been cast. I'd even argue that she gives the strongest performance since Hillary Swank in Million Dollar Baby. She gives an absolutely amazing performance as Mary, Precious' mother.

    The director, Lee Daniels, has an unbelievable list of movies he's produced, and with what he does with Precious, I'd say he will get better along the way, and hopefully we can see movies that he directs on par with what he's produced.

    Good story, and great performances, Precious is a movie worth searching out.
  • lilschwarze
    November 23, 2009
    lilschwarze
    wow that's great plz can u make me another one
  • straumann1
    November 23, 2009
    straumann1
    I don't know about this movie.
  • mv1334
    November 23, 2009
    mv1334
    "Very gripping and sad film, one of the best of 09'. Gabourey Sidibe gives an astounishing performance as Precious, she better be ready for the Oscars and Golden Globes next year, her name will appear in GG and Oscars. Mo'Nique as well, probably will win the Supporting Actress ca...( read more)tegory in both and what a shocking performance by Mo'Nique, she scared the hell out of me. Paula Patton may not get attention for her sweet, caring teacher role but she should, she was awesome. Mariah Carey does great in her small role as well. Precious will get so many awards, you won't believe it. I can feel it."
  • 1658
    November 23, 2009
    1658
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  • datbmoregurlkita
    November 23, 2009
    datbmoregurlkita
    I Loved it!!!!!!!!!!
  • tracihandley
    November 23, 2009
    tracihandley
    This movie is very emotional. If you are not prepared to cry don't go see it!
  • diveintooblivion
    November 23, 2009
    diveintooblivion
    critics have been raving so far. i'm interested to see what all the hype is about.
  • Dracula787
    November 23, 2009
    Dracula787
    Lee Daniel?s film Precious is a movie that has been heavily hyped by a number of critical forces since its debut at this year?s Sundance film festival. In spite of all the good marks the film has been getting, the prospect of actually seeing the damn thing is something I?d been d...( read more)reading all year. There were a number of elements to this movie that had me apprehensions, chief among them being the movie?s title, which seems to set the movie up has some kind of kindergarten level self-esteem exercise about how everyone is ?special? and ?precious.? Even the film?s producers seem to be embraced by that title as evidenced by the awkward way they?ve been attaching ?based on the novel ?Push? by Sapphire? to the back of it every chance they get. The bigger force in making me dread this viewing experience is the film?s trailer, which sells the movie as exactly the kind of inspirational sappiness I was afraid it would be. The fact that Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, two people who are hardly adverse to the saccharine, were attaching their names didn?t boost my confidence either. My one hope was that the last prestige movie I dreaded this much was Brokeback Mountain, which looked like pure cheese from the trailer featuring the trademark ?I can?t quit you? line, but that movie proved to be a extremely well done and expertly restrained work. Knowing how bad trailers can make certain movies look when they?re being sold to the public, I held out hope that this was just a case of problematic advertising, that this really was as good as all the buzz would have me believe. Trust me; I really wanted this to be good, but for the most part this proved to be a sad case of truth in advertising.

    The film centers on Claireece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), who goes by her middle name and who is in a really bad situation. She?s a sixteen year old living in a squalid Harlem apartment with her mentally and physically abusive mother (Mo?Nique), who gets all her income from welfare. Claireece is illiterate, she gave birth to a mentally disabled child after being raped by her own father, and now she?s pregnant again with another of her father?s children. So what is the point of focusing on someone who is in this bad of a situation. If the not-so-subtle naming of its main character, the ?inspirational? quote the movie opens on, its tagline (Life is hard. Life is short. Life is painful. Life is rich. Life is....Precious.) and its website URL (weareallprecious.com) are any indication; the hallmark card-like goal of this movie is to prove to its audience that everyone even, if they are in dire straits, is precious. This is a message in search of an audience to convince. Does anyone really think a person is any less ?precious? simply because they suffer in life? I find it rather insulting that the filmmakers feel the need to prove this to the audience to begin with. What?s worse I don?t think the film even follows its own mantra.

    Let?s think about all the problems that the filmmakers have saddled Caireece with. It obviously isn?t Caireece?s fault that her mother is abusive, her mother is also implicated as the source of Claireece?s problems in school, and her parents are also the cause of her pregnancies either by direct action (in the case of her father) or from failing to prevent the situation (in the case of her mother). Sapphire and screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher have basically constructed a character who is completely blameless for the situation she?s in, every one of her problems are without a shadow of a doubt placed squarely on the shoulders of her screwed up family. This, too me, is the root weakness of this movie. It?s very easy to generate sympathy for someone who?s had all their problems thrust upon them, its simplistic. Had they decided to create a character that was in a situation like this because they themselves made some bad decisions in life, and then established them as someone who was ?precious? it would have made for a movie that was significantly more challenging, provocative, and true to life.

    As such, I found myself significantly more interested in Claireece?s deeply flawed mother than I was in the blameless martyr for whom the film is titled. But the film isn?t really interested in exploring this mother either, or in adding many nuances to her character. She?s basically as evil as Claireece is sympathetic. This mother is pretty much everything that Ronald Reagan had in his head when he coined the term ?welfare queen.? She?s a fat, lazy woman who spends all her days watching game shows except when she occasionally leaves in order to play ?the numbers.? She constantly abuses and discourages Claireece, threatening to beat her whenever she fails to do everything she?s told and actively preventing her from furthering her education. Later in the movie she proves to be such a moustache twirling villain as to actively insult and toss a baby. But let?s hold on a second. I thought everybody was supposed to be precious. Therefore, shouldn?t that make Claireece?s mother precious too. I don?t think the content of the movie would support that, it produces a pretty simple dichotomy of the blameless child and the evil mother. In essence this is a movie that has a great deal of sympathy for people who are born into bad situations, but very little sympathy for those who have created a bad situation for themselves. This rather conservative message is a fair enough point of view, but I find the film?s endless claims of having a compassionate and non-judgmental world view to be disingenuous.

    Putting all that aside, there are other elements that make this a pretty uncompelling movie going experience, and chief among them is a character named Blu Rain, played by Paula Patton, who is meant to be a thinly disguised version of the movie?s author (get it, sapphire, Blue Rain). This character is a teacher at an alternative education facility that Claireece is sent to, and this school storyline is easily the most clichéd and sappy element of the whole movie. This whole subplot basically turns this into one of those horrible movies about saint-like inspirational teachers trying desperately to reach a diverse group of ?inner-city? youths. There is almost nothing that separates the classroom elements here from garbage like Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver, and Freedom Writers. I had thought that this ridiculous trope had been shattered once and for all by Ryan Fleck?s excellent 2006 drama Half Nelson, and perhaps by the great fourth season of David Simon?s ?The Wire,? both works which have significantly more knowledge of the condition of underprivileged youths than this movie could ever dream of possessing. The ineptitude of this sub-plot is magnified by Paula Patton?s less than stellar performance which is well below the standard set by the rest of the cast. When this character says to Caireece: ?your daughter loves you, I love you? it?s every bit as TV-movie worthy as the trailer would have you believe.

    Fortunately, the rest of the acting in this movie is a lot better than the work Patton displays. In fact I?d probably say that the excellent performances of Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'Nique are damn near the film?s only redeeming qualities. Sidibe, an unknown, is quite a find and is perfect for her role. Many have made the mistake of thinking that she was simply an underprivileged young girl that the filmmakers found on the street and essentially cast as herself in the role, but this isn?t really the case, she?s an actress playing a role and she plays it really well. Mo?Nique is even more of a revelation in her role, like Jamie Foxx before her she?s a comedian who has broken out of the ?black comedy? ghetto to prove herself to be a great and forceful actor. These are both roles that require the two thespians to inhabit very foreign roles which require a whole lot of yelling and crying, the kind of roles that are easy to give awards to, but both Sidibe and Mo?Nique do their jobs effectively and I think it is their work that has primarily tricked a multitude of critics and pundits into thinking this movie is something more than it really is.

    I wish I could say that there was another element that matched the performances of these two actresses, but there really isn?t. I suppose some of the dialogue was pretty well written, at least outside of the Blu Rain sub-plot, but otherwise I found a lot of the filmmaking here subpar. Lee Daniels? direction here seems confused and inconsistent. On one hand Daniels, whose only previous directing credit is the critically lambasted Shadowboxer, seems to want to give the movie a gritty handheld look to match the material, but he undercuts this style at all points with a variety of visual tricks and devices that are at odds with this. The movie is filled with montages, scenes where video is superimposed onto walls, obnoxious fantasy sequences that go nowhere and signify almost nothing, and the occasional Arronofsy-esque quick cut montage. It feels like Daniels is trying to use every crayon in his box of tricks to seeing what sticks rather than simply letting the story play out, and this is all the more problematic simply because a lot of these tricks aren?t even overly well executed.

    There?s one great scene towards the end, a confrontation between Claireece and her mother, in which the two actresses are finally allowed to talk in detail without being interrupted by one of Lee Daniel?s stupid tricks. It?s probably the only scene in the movie where the mother is given a shred of complexity and the film?s style really accentuates the scene rather than interrupt it. This is like an isolated scene from a much better movie and if the rest of the material here had been on par with that scene this might have been something great. Instead this is a major missed opportunity filled with sappy material, a confused message, told by a confused filmmaker that has somehow hypnotized America?s critics into ignoring its numerous flaws.
  • ejelynm
    November 23, 2009
    ejelynm
    very nice and interesting
  • valadezraymond
    November 22, 2009
    valadezraymond
    such a strong powerful movie that depicts home life in such a dark way. wakes you up to the world and its disgusting occurrences and how sometimes you have no control of what life has given you.
  • maceegarcia
    November 22, 2009
    maceegarcia
    The acting in this movie was amazing! Can't wait to see this at the Oscars!
  • SC007
    November 22, 2009
    SC007
    Very powerful and emotional film. I can see the female lead getting nominated and even winning Best Actress Oscar. I can also see Monique getting nominated in the supporting actress and even winning for her abusive mother character. I could even see Paula Patton and Mariah Carey ...( read more)get nominated too, but not winning. Lenny Kravitz was good in the film in a small role. I think the film would win best adapted screenplay too. I can see this getting nominated for picture and director, but I don't see it winning for them.
  • spencercleveland
    November 22, 2009
    spencercleveland
    THAT IS GOING TO BE GOOD
  • brwnanluvly
    November 22, 2009
    brwnanluvly
    Great movie. Monique really did a wonderful job.
  • evadnevenise
    November 22, 2009
    evadnevenise
    good movie but very gritty. loved the main character
  • ceWEBrity
    November 22, 2009
    ceWEBrity
    The tale itself may seem conventional, and in some regards it is, but Precious isn't afraid to be bizarre, nor is it apologetic for the situations and characters it presents. With a life as hard as Precious's, it only makes sense that she would want to retreat into her vivid, col...( read more)orfully contrasted fantasies; the fact that we see both poles of her fucked-up existence makes watching all the more difficult. Precious is an elegant counter to something of hopeful, blind idealism such as Slumdog Millionaire; unlike the latter film, things are DEFINITELY not okay at the end of her tale, but there's still hope to be found. A little of the shade and the misery that was eternally present in Precious's face (communicated flawlessly by Gabby Sidibe, who'll be receiving Oscar attention soon) has been chipped away by her newfound gifts and revelations. Precious is an audacious movie for positing an obese black woman as a cinematic hero, and it doesn't even sanctify her at all; she's sort of a difficult person to like, but the movie makes you work for it, and sure enough you become invested in her success. Again, this is mostly due to Sidibe's portrayal of a girl with a sneaky, subdued sort of intelligence, the kind of person who has a lot of insight but is too downtrodden to share it with anyone.

    Precious, as I said before, is a bizarre movie. I don't think some of the directorial choices are going to work for everyone, most notably the unusual cutaway to a Vittorio de Sica film, superimposed with Precious and her mother acting out a scene about eating; though it can be read as a benchmark as to how far Precious is willing to go to escape her life, most viewers will probably just be thinking "what the fuck?" But then the entire movie is sort of "what the fuck?" so it really isn't that much of a stretch. Aside from a simple narrative perspective, the brightness and vividity of the fantasy scenes offer immense relief, standing directly opposite of the harsh darkness of Precious's world. The oppressive yellows and browns of her apartment melt away into shimmering reds and blues, lit from corner to corner and filled with smiling faces.

    The Oscar prognostication for the film hasn't been too far off. This is a little darker than the Academy generally goes to, and without the perfect ending of Slumdog Millionaire to run to, they might be shut down by it. But there's no denying the potency of the performances, especially Mo'Nique's, the film's not-so-secret weapon. The terms on which she delivers this performance seem a little unfair - Mary is such an incomprehensible, inhuman monster that you wonder what circumstances could possibly have created someone like her - but there's no denying the gut-wrenching technical proficiency with which she administers it. When she speaks, the unbelievability of her character seems completely overshadowed by how larger than life she is; she's there, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. She is hypnotic.
  • jdarla
    November 22, 2009
    jdarla
    really would enjoy see this movie
  • 3LB
    November 22, 2009
    3LB
    not as good as everyone makes it out to be, but a good movie with very strong performances from the cast
  • Mandy096
    November 22, 2009
    Mandy096
    never seen it never want to
  • miliann
    November 22, 2009
    miliann
    It is a movie that I would like to see. I like the people that are behind the movie
  • clubpenguinfan99
    November 22, 2009
    clubpenguinfan99
    havent seen it...........yet
  • officiallyme
    November 21, 2009
    officiallyme
    it was good but the ending left you think about too much and how certain things happen... but all the acting was very good :)
  • pumpkinpie21212
    November 21, 2009
    pumpkinpie21212
    It sounds SAD!!!!!!!!!!!
  • kandigrl9928
    November 21, 2009
    kandigrl9928
    The movie was good but of course the book was better. And to me you had to read the book to really appreciate the movie because to movie left so many things out. The thing that got on my nerves was the dream scenes. After the first and second one...I was done with that! Oh by...( read more) the way, I felt Monique made this movie!
  • otarisha
    November 21, 2009
    otarisha
    i ENJOYED THE BOOK BETTER THAN THE MOVIE BUT i WILL SAY THAT MO'NIQUE DID A HELL OF A JOB ON HER ROLE!!!!
  • MrOrange8590
    November 21, 2009
    MrOrange8590
    i honestly cant tell if this is a Tyler Perry movie or something serious... either way ill pass
  • joanne411
    November 21, 2009
    joanne411
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  • profounderibeauty
    November 21, 2009
    profounderibeauty
    i actually havent seen it YET but i knw imma cry like ten times. It seems reallllly goood!
  • nik3mad
    November 21, 2009
    nik3mad
    Best movie I have seen in a long time.
  • Jenn7392
    November 21, 2009
    Jenn7392
    Really want to see if it's as good as all the hype.
  • davidjames1012260
    November 21, 2009
    davidjames1012260
    is good and intresting
  • babsrulez1977
    November 21, 2009
    babsrulez1977
    heard this one is good
  • rainy2213
    November 21, 2009
    rainy2213
    it reminds me of how life really is theres hope
  • xxjessie101xx1
    November 21, 2009
    xxjessie101xx1
    Never heard of it. . .
  • keebrown09
    November 21, 2009
    keebrown09
    SOUNDS LIKE IT IS GOOD REALLY WANT TO SEE IT!
  • loverlybird
    November 21, 2009
    loverlybird
    This movie is pretty heavy (pun not intended). And I really wish that I could love it as much as I thought I would. But in all its charm, the level of darkness in Precious' life seems a bit overkill, especially since this is fiction. And unfortunately, where the movie probably wo...( read more)uld benefit from subtleties, things are painted it out in huge strokes, the American way... The "happy" ending feels misplaced. Really fun to see Mariah Carey in a serious role though, almost makeup-free and with a pretty decent performance.
  • gms7862009
    November 21, 2009
    gms7862009
    I can't see this movie
  • sheddran
    November 20, 2009
    sheddran
    very much interesting
  • elainetianlong
    November 20, 2009
    elainetianlong
    i like to watch it because i think there is a hyding value which everybody should look at it, then start a new direction on themselves. Not everybody hates us...in other way, many people love ue
  • Sissylovesyou18
    November 20, 2009
    Sissylovesyou18
    I want to see it so bad...it looks like a good movie but I know when I see it i'll cry.
  • JeT0425
    November 20, 2009
    JeT0425
    Review coming soon (11/21/09).
  • macys429
    November 20, 2009
    macys429
    One of my TOP Faves this year!
  • almaleah
    November 20, 2009
    almaleah
    OH YESSSSSSSSSSSSS, YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS, YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
  • droberts2409
    November 20, 2009
    droberts2409
    looks good worth owning
  • frank522
    November 20, 2009
    frank522
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  • ohar2475
    November 20, 2009
    ohar2475
    A must see. it was more than I expected.

Summary

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire Summary