Movie Thoughts: The Help

The Help is currently on HBO for the nth time as I am writing this. Only, it's not me in front of the telly anymore but the other times it was on, I have been front and center. That was not the case a couple of years ago.
I had the opportunity to watch The Help two years ago. Friends recommended it to me but I was not interested. I thought it would be dull, stale and, well, uninteresting even though I've seen the trailers where Octavia Spencer was a presenting a shit-laden chocolate pie to Bryce Dallas Howard.
I could not have been more wrong.
A month ago, HBO started showing The Help every other day. As I did not have anything else to do (my life sucks), I shrugged and said Why not? And before you know it, I was engaged and was following every movement and dialogue with avid attention. Michael should be preening by now. He was the one who asked me two years ago if I already watched it.
I am not very familiar with US history but I do get the general idea about the time period this film was set in. Though able to vote and have some freedom that women fifty years ago did not have, women of this era were still restricted to their stereotyped gender roles. Skeeter was different. She's independent, she's the only one who's still single among her "friends" and she wants to pursue a writing career. Cue shocked faces from traditional Jackson, Mississippi. In addition, despite amendments to the constitution and expanded legal rights, African-Americans were still treated like dirt - segregated and discriminated. The attitudes of her white friends toward their help and also in part to the memory of her beloved nanny, Skeeter gets the idea of writing the relationships between whites and their black help. 
The story was riveting pushed by the phenomenal acting of Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard and Jessica Chastain. It showed that the perfect, well-mannered, cultured people are not always as good as one might think and that those low-born, rough, earthy people are the ones with the hearts of gold. The skanky bitch, shunned by the prim, Stepford wives, was kind but naive and you couldn't help but cheer for her. And nannies could come to treat and love the children they are taking care of as their own. 
It made me laugh, it made me sad and yes, I thought Stuart was never right for Skeeter right from the start. Anyone and anything that Hilly Holbrook recommended should have come with a "proceed with caution" sign.
I guess loving this movie should teach me that I should not show disdain for anything without checking it out first instead of passing judgment after a glance. I mean it's also the same with The Descendants and The Host. Prejudiced! I dare say. No more if I could help it. 
By the way, this movie gets 

I think I'll also read the book.