Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's a potent and moving experience, because by the end you feel you've witnessed nothing less than the birth of a soul.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A great American film.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

This drama about an obese, illiterate black teen in Harlem practically guarantees some emotional uplift. But when it arrives, eventually, its authority is unimpeachable, so deeply has director Lee Daniels (Monster's Ball) immersed us in the depths of human ugliness.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Genuinely and irresistibly inspirational.

San Francisco Chronicle Amy Biancolli

A movie about an obese Harlem teenager who's raped by her father and abused by her mother. It's depressing, devastating, harrowing and repulsive. But there are lyric flights of hope interspersed among that raw naturalism, and that's what makes this movie amazing.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Qualifies as the most painful, poetic and improbably beautiful film of the year.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

This movie catalogs a wealth of human ugliness. It’s even been made to look ugly, presumably to underscore the horror movie that is Precious’s life.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

It's cathartic and exhilarating.

Empire Angie Errigo

While it may not be perfect on a technical level, dramatically it’s a blow-your-socks-off triumph. Be moved. Very, very moved.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Precious can’t be endorsed as entertainment: the circumstances and incidents and emotions in the film are far too dark and painful. But there is exhilaration in its daring, in its craft and in the powerhouse work of its principal actresses.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Nimble and self-assured as Mr. Daniels’s direction may be, he could not make you believe in “Precious” unless you were able to believe in Precious herself. You will.

NPR Bob Mondello

Its story ends up packing an emotional wallop as substantial as its title character.

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

Nothing quite prepares you for the rough-cut diamond that is Precious. A rare blend of pure entertainment and dark social commentary, this shockingly raw, surprisingly irreverent and absolutely unforgettable story.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

This is an exceptional film about nearly unendurable circumstances, endured. You will come out the other side of it a markedly enriched filmgoer.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Manages the task of being both heartbreaking and heart-warming.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Claireece "Precious" Jones, played by Gabourey Sidibe, 24, in an astounding debut that brims with grit and amazing grace.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

To its credit, this remarkable film does not contrive a happy ending. Under the circumstances, even a mildly hopeful one seems like a triumph of the highest order.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams

Although Precious is based on a novel, it's an act of truth-telling on behalf of a character in hellish enslavement.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

It melodramatizes everything and yet its overall effect is something more than melodrama.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

The film's real strength is its cast, from an Oscar-bound Mo'Nique to a notably deglammed Mariah Carey.

Film Threat Nick Antosca

Shot in the manner of a grueling horror picture, with jittery edits to half-remembered traumas and glistening close-ups on the faces of monsters.

The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge

As Precious, Sidibe is superb, allowing us to see the inner warmth and beauty of a young woman who, to her world's cruel eyes, might seem monstrous.

Variety John Anderson

An urban nightmare with a surfeit of soul, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire is like a diamond -- clear, bright, but oh so hard.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Not even Douglas Sirk or Lars von Trier would heap so much abuse on a heroine. And yet, on its own melodramatic, tear-jerking terms, Precious works.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Despite its melodramatic moments, remarkable performances drive home the film's inspiring message.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Precious is a bit like having a piano dropped on your head: messy but memorable.

New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott

Precious is painful, it is harrowing, it is emotionally exhausting. It is also a singular film, one that is as difficult to compare to another as it is to forget.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

You go to a Daniels movie not to be entertained, but edified. While not everyone goes to the movies for self-improvement, you will leave this one having witnessed phenomenal acting.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

This bruising, harrowing movie would be impossible to sit through without at least a hint of light at the end of its astonishingly dark tunnel.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The performances are so plainspoken and direct that they manage to push the material beyond the confines of a mere social-problem tract -- as played by the cast, these characters aren't symbols of inner-city hardship, but people.

Village Voice Scott Foundas

Yet even when the movie is at its most schizoid, Precious still packs a wallop.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

It is certainly the best button-pushing movie of the year.

Time Out New York Keith Uhlich

Given the months-long hype, what’s most bewildering about Sundance sensation Precious is its overall shrug-worthiness.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The elements of Precious are powerful and shocking, but the movie is programmed. It is its own study guide.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

What we have here is a fouled-up fairy tale of oppression and empowerment, and it’s hard not to be ensnared by its mixture of rank maleficence and easy reverie. The gap between being genuinely stirred and having your arm twisted, however, is narrower than we care to admit.

Slate Dana Stevens

In its eagerness to drag us through the lower depths of human experience, Precious leaves no space for the audience to breathe or to draw our own conclusions. For a film about empowerment and self-actualization, it wields an awfully large cudgel.