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Every
year, there is usually a Best Picture nominee I disagree with. Some disagreements are small, like LIFE OF PI
this year. A few are huge, like BEASTS
OF THE SOUTHERN WILD. In 2009, PRECIOUS,
BASED ON THE NOVEL “PUSH” BY SAPHIRE (pretentious much?) took Sundance by
storm, followed by the rest of the country in November. It came to my neck of the woods on the first
weekend of December. You would be hard
pressed to find someone who hated the movie more.
PRECIOUS
is a movie about a brutally beaten, abused and lonely teenager Precious Jones (Gabourey
Sidibe) living with her mother Mary (Mo’Nique), the welfare queen Ronald Reagan
warned us about. Precious is pregnant
(again), raped by her father, sent to an alternative school, is the butt of all
jokes about her obesity and will be diagnosed with HIV. How could this movie be anything but
depressing?
I
saw the movie for a second time about three weeks. And it really is two different movies: one
where Mary Jones runs rampant and one where she doesn’t exist. The latter is just marvelous. We find out who Precious is. She is fairly intelligent and loving. Precious is the type of young lady who would thrive
under normal circumstances. Alas,
Precious lives a depressing and torturous life.
All because of her mother.
Just to cut the chase, Mary
Jones is a reprehensible thing. To call
her a human is an insult to the bacteria that causes the common cold in human
beings. She runs her household &
family like a tyrant. Mary is the worst
kind of villain: one who has no redeeming quality. No matter how terrible a villain is, we can
really say something positive about them.
Hannibal Lector, Dr. Strangelove & Col. Hans Landa all have one
thing in common: they are all geniuses.
Mary Jones is a fat, fugly, rude, egotistical bitch. She is the kind of character, and I use that
term loosely for this one note wench, who deserves nothing. Which makes the final scene even more
reprehensible.
Mary meets with Precious and
their social worker in the office in order to get her assistance back. In the scene, Mary spills her guts, talking
about everything from the relationship she had with Precious’ father/baby
daddy. She goes into detail about when the
bond between herself & Precious, which is only barely covered by pictures
during one of the numerous beatings of her daughter, went sour. In short, Precious was first abused at two or
three while Mary & Precious’ father were in the middle of lovemaking. And Mary, after unsuccessfully (half-assedly)
trying to stop it, Mary GETS JEALOUS OF HER DAUGHTER GETTING HER
MAN’S ATTENTION!!! Instead of
stopping the discussion, the social worker weakly allows Satan to finish. And boy, does she finish! Mary asks for SYMPATHY. Specifically, she asks “Who’s going
to love me?” With all the truly
reprehensible things she has done, including throwing a TV at her daughter and
grandson, she gets a chance at redemption.
We all know she wasn’t going to get redeemed, but the fact that the
novelist Saphire, screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher & director Lee Daniels
would have the audacity of having this monologue and that final line is a
joke. A truly unfunny, worthless,
time-wasting joke.
Needless to say, PRECIOUS is not
a movie I will ever love. It has
elements and the potential to be loved.
But when I discover a character that is so pathetic & worthless, I
regret wasting time and bytes talking about her. I hope never to think about Mary Jones, or
any woman like her who supposedly exists in the real world, ever again.
*1/2
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