I must be a bad film critic for not liking a movie it appears every other film critic has embraced. This is not the first time I have stood alone against the critical juggernaut before, most recently with The Wrestler, but this time I feel more isolated in my displeasure about such a sloppy movie made of interesting parts. Oh, well, I don’t want to be apart of their club if they can’t take the criticism they dish out.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire is a sad example of what not to do when trying to make an inspirational movie. It’s sad because there is a good movie (maybe not great) here if only it would calm down and understand the limits of an audience’s tolerance towards the incredible. Precious is the hero at the center of this story and is played by newcomer Gabourey ‘Gabby’ Sidibe. She is 16 years old and extremely obese. She has one child by incestuous rape and another on the way. Her mother, played by comedian Mo’Nique, is nothing short of a monster. She tortures her daughter while using her and her baby for welfare. Why does this woman hate her daughter so much? You can tell why just in how she treats her, partially a slave and whipping boy for a life she feels was denied to her.  She wouldn’t even let the girl out to go to school if welfare didn’t require it. The hate that comes out of this woman’s mouth is intened to keep this girl pinned into a life of subservience and pain. Precious escapes into a life of fantasies where she’s the star that others adore.

After her second pregnancy is detected (though Precious doesn’t give up the father), she is kicked out of school and is placed into alternative education where she is introduced to Miss Rain (Paula Patton), one of those inspirational teachers that movies always make out to be saints on top of being great educators. She decides she wants to get out from under her mother’s grip and still be a mother as well. This leads to the mother of all clashes between mother and daughter.

Again, inside this idea is a good movie, an inspirational movie. And the actors here are really good. But director Lee Daniels and screenwriter Gregory Fletcher are more interested in hammering the audience with blunt objects and objectives that it gets really annoying. We don’t just have the mother being cruel and mean, but she has to have a monologue to explain everything we already understood about her character. Miss Rain has be saintly and never show even a pause of exhaustion from seeing girls come in and out who really don’t want help. There is never a gray area where a character’s intentions are questioned. They either fall into simple categories of Friend or Enemy.

And let’s also talk about beating a dead horse. Why does the movie keep feeling like it needs to keep making things worse for Precious? Not only does she have the devil for a mother and a pedophile father, but two incestuous children, is extremely heavy, laughed at or ignored by others, but as the movie goes along, things keep getting worse to the point that she is given extremely grave news during a time when such news is fatal. I can understand making things tough for a character as done in A Serious Man or Slumdog Millionaire, but the film feels like it has to keep piling on crap on this poor girl just in case her life isn’t hard enough.  There is definitely a lot of neo-realism going on in this movie except that once we get near the end, the movie gets so ridiculously contrived that we are left not believing that what we are seeing is reality. The sad thing is maybe all of these events were real for someone, but shown as it was in this movie, I couldn’t buy it.

And the final straw that killed any chance of me liking this movie is that I could not for the life of me either relate to nor empathize with Precious, which was the filmmakers were wanting me to do. And the reason I can’t is because the situations feel contrived and that the filmmakers are trying too hard to get me to pity Precious that they never really allow her to open up to us as the audience except in these ridiculous fantasy scenes that are better imagined than seen. I know about mental abuse, I have lived with someone whose mind and mouth were not so far from this mother creature. You don’t have to exaggerate it to make it ugly. Doing so makes it into a caricature and therefore rots it’s validity. And sadly enough, it rots how we perceive Precious.

Let me make myself clear; the acting in this movie is a lot better than it deserves, especially from very unusual places. Mo’Nique gives a terrifying portrayal if a little too over the top. I’m pretty sure she will be seeing some justified awards season attention. The same goes for ‘Gabby’ Sidibe, who does a great job making this girl feel real if the situations around her seem unreal. Even more unlikely is pop diva Mariah Carrey as a welfare agent who gets Precious to open up. Most of her scenes are really meant for her to react to Precious, but she doesn’t allow herself to be belittled by a thankless role. Even more impressive is Lenny Kravitz as a male nurse who gets a few great scenes to shine, though he really doesn’t add much to the story.

All in all, this is not really a bad film, just a misguided one and one that I honestly can’t say I want to relive. I have had enough pain and sorrow in much better films to waste my time on needless suffering. Others might disagree. I already know a few who do. But not in real life, those are the people agree with me.