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Visual:		4.0
Audio:		5.0
Acting:		7.0
Writing:		3.0
Score:		2.0

Director(s):	Lee Daniels
Writer(s):	Sapphire (novel), Geoffrey Fletcher (screenplay)
Starring:	Mariah Carey • Paula Patton • Gabourey Sidibe • Mo'Nique • Lenny Kravitz
Genre:	Drama
Website:	http://www.weareallprecious.com/
Release Date:	November 20, 2009
Rated:

Movies would be so much simpler if we measure them by their sympathy factor. Precious would be a top-scorer, racking up points as it lines up social hardship like bullseye targets. It's a capably-acted film; I hope to see its star Gabby Sidibe in more films after this. Unfortunately, that's all the film could accomplish. Outside of a very nicely nuanced central performance, Precious is—how should I put this—a piece of shit.

This is a social worker's fetish porn, a freak show of ghetto blows constructed to go for the cheapest vote. Based on the novel Push by Sapphire, it tells the grimy life of Precious, a sixteen-year-old girl in mid 80's Harlem whose existence so far bears the stink of God's perverted sense of humor. She's black, obese, illiterate, and pregnant for a second time by an absent father who only comes home when he feels like raping her. Her first baby—also his—has Down Syndrome; whom she calls Lil' Mongol (short for mongoloid). She lives with a breathing dumpster of a mother played by Mo'Nique, a welfare queen who verbally and physically assaults Precious on a daily basis, and commands her to sign up for welfare instead of going to school or getting a job.

It's not the illiteracy that establishes Precious as a dumb girl; it's the film's lack of any desire to justify why she seems completely apathetic to her own torment. Usually, someone in an abusive relationship would have an excuse to stay in it—either a misguided hope for change or the occasional apology or little gestures that hint at a different side—but there's none here, as Precious' mother always comes across as a cartoon monster. It takes the easy route (family stays together!), even though Precious should be at an age of being more confrontational. And she is, as seen in an earlier scene when she violently bitchslaps a class clown for disrupting a lesson.

But never mind the blinkered storytelling; even the visual choices that director Lee Daniels employ are uninspired and crass. It's almost in love with its own monstrosity, presenting its main character and her surroundings as intolerably gross—with sweltering visions of sweat and grease invading the screen—not as a commitment to the authenticity, but as a clueless cinematic exaggeration that would make the horror more titillating for the disapproving sighs of viewers.

Precious is not inspiring. It's grotesquely condescending.

Socially conscious films are supposed to be thought-provoking, otherwise it's mute. That means presenting matters in a way that engages the curiosity to research or just consider the issues it touches upon. Precious is not such a film. Daniels prefers to shock you into submission rather than incite interesting questions.

Strangely, it wants to be shocking while at the same time watered down. The writer, Geoffrey Fletcher, is a Harvard-educated man from a wealthy family; a background that disconnects with the material enough to keep his adaptation floating slightly above the characters—looking down with morbid curiosity. This perhaps explains why the more provocative parts of the novel are missing: Precious' hatred towards white people (protagonist no-no!), her urinating in class (ooh gross!), and her uncontrollable sexual enjoyment of her rape (women say what?).

It wants to be edgy, but not so edgy that it would turn off Oprah viewers, which is the worthless kind of edgy. I'm not a fan of Spike Lee, but I'd be far more interested in how he would've handled these characters.

The best thing I can say about Precious is that it manages to stop short of being unintentionally funny, which it had full potential to be. Fortunately, it's just unpleasant enough to stifle its own ridiculousness. I wish the film is a little more like Precious; uncertain and sparse in action, yet unexpectedly thoughtful and observant. More like Precious' mother, the film is prone to emotional outbursts without ever stopping to think about where they come from or what the consequences are.