Director Tate Taylor has done an outstanding job putting The Help onto the big screen. Based on Kathryn Stockett's 2009 bestseller, the film illustrates the lives of six white women and their black maids in 1960s Jackson, Miss.

Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone) is fresh out of the University of Mississippi and finds that her friends have become housewives — and that their children are being raised by their maids. As an aspiring journalist, Skeeter lands a job at the local newspaper writing a cleaning column. She, however, knows nothing about cooking or cleaning and seeks help from Aibileen (Viola Davis), her friend's maid.

After talking to Aibileen and listening to her friends discuss a city ordinance that requires white families to have separate bathrooms for their help, Skeeter decides to write a book about the lives of maids. Although collecting these stories is illegal, Skeeter with help of Aibileen and her friend, Minny (Octavia Spencer), convinces about a dozen maids to confide their personal stories. Although the movie closely follows the novel's plot, there are subplots that slightly detours from the book — for example, Skeeter's relationship with Stuart Whitworth (Chris Lowell).

This film is sure to accrue Stockett many more fans. After being turned down by 60 publishers, her book now has sold more than 5 million copies and remains on The New York Times Best Seller List for fiction.

Marielle Dent is a junior at Academy for Technology and the Classics. You can reach her at onyx-13@hotmail.com.