John McWhorter has an unorthodox defense of the film:
The critics who inveigh against The Help for its mass market appeal are being duplicitous. Long ago, black film and television historian Donald Bogle counseled that “black films can liberate audiences from illusions, black and white, and in so freeing can give all of us vision and truth.” That’s a very debatable proposition—but, in any case, it would require that this “responsibility” be exercised within realistic commercial parameters. To be liberated, the audience has to show up.
Adam Serwer isn't entirely sold. Harold Pollack, detached from the controversy at hand, remembers childhood.
The Dish 