Very great film.. inspiring and so natural.. as per the title itself, based on a true story... was able to show that it is and it is not a just a film.. Carey acted well.. Natural and great.. Monique is very good..

This movie was just purely amazing, I didn't expect to be that good because usually movies that hyped up like this one was aren't that good, but movie was just great. I did expect a little more screen time from Mariah Carey's character Ms. Weiss, but her performance was really good and Gabourey Sidebeh was great as Precious and of course Mo'Nique was unbelievable as Mary, I mean to see her go from The Parkers, The Queens of Comedy and small supporting roles in movies to this is just pure talent. She was great in Domino and Shadwboxer, but she had small supporting roles, and in this movie she had a supporting role, but she completely stole the movie and every scene she was in which is why I know she will the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and Gabby will definitely get nominated for Best Actress… Expand

Precious is definitely a good film. Excellent performances by literally everyone in the cast, especially Mo'Nique. It has a heart-wrenching story and, well, it definitely makes one think. It all works, but somehow it just isn't fully what I've expected, there is a little thing that would make this film excellent... this way it's "just" a great film. I'd recommend it, for sure.

Alright. The film kind of dragged on as i was waiting for something great. The best thing about the film are the actors Mo'Nique and Carey.

This is a GREAT movie with some terrifically dramatic but nicely understated performances. Not kid-friendly, that's for sure. Mariah Carey is perfectly cast.

This movie always throw surprise moments...just like real life. Solid performance from all casts...including very surprisingly Mariah Carey. This movie can be very depressing...just had to prepare the right mood or will get overwhelmed.

Amazing movie! If you have ever been through similar in your life this movie is a must. This really shows the courage some women have to get out.

The film is honest and intelligent and well filmed and edited. What more can one ask of any film?

I really wanted to love it, and I didn't. And at the end, it just clunks along and falls flat when Mo'Nique is suppose to soar and bring it all together. For me, it's not an Oscar caliber performance. She just doesn't have the skill set. The actors are great and that saves it.

I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it. It's a life changer.

At first i was not sure, i thought it was yet another low budget stereotypical film which targeted people who like over dramatic films. I was wrong though, dead wrong. Mo"nique was amazing and worth watching for her alone. At first you hate her and by the end you just feel sorry for her (role). Gabby is great, really good performance although i wish she spoke more clear but that was also part of the role. Only slight disappointment for me was Mariah Carey, not cause she was not good but cause she was not nearly as good as all the hype made me believe. Overall though: great movie, great actors -all of them.… Expand

Flawless. Touching.

The movie depicts the ugly reality existing behind so many closed doors. The performances by all actors are superb. Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe does an incredible job of digging into the heart, but it's Mo'Nique's performance that truly gets to the soul of the viewer. She's wickedly despicable, yet sadly pathetic at the same time. When an actor can bring out that kind of emotion, that's what I call Oscar material. Definitely a moving movie!… Expand

Very bogus. Everything bad that could happen happens to this poor blank-faced girl, until a lesbian fairy-godmother saves her, and an all girl crew from Welcome Back Kotter cheers her into a life-affirming semi-happy ending. Phoney, but because it's set in 1980's Harlem, white critics are afraid to knock it. And since its been vetted by Oprah (who did so well with James Frey) its seen as ghetto-authentic. Ugh.… Expand

2009's best, as far as I'm concerned...not a missed beat or a false note anywhere...the performances are flawless.

"Precious", is an extremely powerful, emotional, and uplifting film. It is one of the year's very best films. I have seen it twice now, and it's a film that gets better, each time you watch it. Oscar is written all over this film.

I still can't figure out how I sat through so much sorrow and so much pity and still walked out of the theatre feeling so positively touched. Oscar is surely going to shine on Precious next year. Gabourey Sidibe is amazing in her film debut, Mo'Nique is simply brilliant and who knew Mariah Carey could be unrecognizable and a good actress. It's a shame the Academy didn't increase its acting categories to ten because everyone in this cast is good enough for a nomination.… Expand

Harrowing but rewarding.

Loved IT! Oscars for Mo'nique & Gabby!

There are so many ways this film could not have worked. I was so ready to be turned off that like a horror flik I kept waiting for that really bad scene to jump out at me. Instead I was drawn, maybe pulled but not bullied by performers who played their character with care to both the strong and subtle points of their role. The human that plays hide and seek out of Precious's slit-eyed mask and the evil cum victim that roars and cries out of the mother's visage are riveting. Mom will win hands down best supporting actress.… Expand

The first 20 minutes were so bad, we left the movie. Choppy. Dull. A caricature of social consciousness.

The sight of a morbidly obese girl who runs out of a chicken joint with a ten-piece bucket without paying for it, practically courts laughter, and for some moviegoers, who prey on the weak, just may hoot, just may holler. "Precious" is about a teacher trying to help a girl reclaim her name from an abusive mother. For now, let's call her Clareece, and this child of rape, undoubtedly, stands out, but in the worst possible way. At school, her first day at an alternative school, Clareece disposes of the fried poultry container in the trash: cause for laughter follows. Breasts, thighs, drumsticks, wings. She ate it all. The moviegoer can see the gristle around her lips. And when Clareece takes a seat beneath a poster that promotes self-esteem, she throws up: cause for more laughter follows, and perhaps, a little exasperation. "Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire" has a self-awareness about audience perception as it pertains to its protagonist. It knows that moviegoers are more accustomed to trim and fit white girls than the dark-skinned girth of Gabourey Sidibe, and that includes the titular character herself, which this twenty-six-year-old newcomer portrays. In her bedroom, Clareece looks into the mirror and sees white too. She sees Carrie White at the prom. Let me explain. Inexplicably, late in "Precious", Joanna(Yosha Roquemore) starts to laugh at the blood on her classmate and the blanket that's wrapped around the baby, following the girl's domestic dispute with her mother Mary(Monique). (Things fly around, but here, it's not telekinesis.) It's the same sort of cruel laughter that befalls the Sissy Spacek character in the 1976 Brian DePalma classic, after John Travolta drenches the prom queen with pig blood. (Incidentally, Mary forces her daughter to eat some poorly prepared pigs' feet.) By the end of the movie, the mother's tyranny over her daughter is over, and the teacher wins. It's a bittersweet victory. While Clareece redefines Mary's baby nickname for her on the terms of this newly emancipated woman, she learns how life itself is precious, and for her, fleeting.… Expand

The movie is awful...i guess its very real...precious looked the part but never really played the part..if her name is gabby she is a horrible actress..its sad to see a great story line go in vain with actresses such as gabby "precious".

Mo'nique is fantastic as Precious' abusive, raging mother, and Gabourey Sidibe is great at showing Precious' emotion. There are many poignant, painful moments during the film, and even if, by the end of the film, you might feel exhausted, you'll definitely feel moved.

I'd like to say this film was at least well intended, but, nah, Oprah notwithstanding, it's grossly sensational and the only three good guys, in an otherwise all black cast, are either white or can pass (one of these is a ridiculous turn by Maria Carey in a ridiculous wig). There's no plot to speak of, with plenty of pointless scenes and major events dropped from consequence once they've been used for their initial impact. Monique shows an admirable lack of vanity in playing someone so repellant, but it's not the performance of a real actress, and the lead girl, while certainly a very specific physical type, is just too deadened in her affect to center a character study.… Expand

This movie is about life. It's not about black or white; people live like this day in, day out. It is empowering to those who feel oppressed that their is hope.

Saw this at Sundance and was blown away - it is painful to watch but very powerful and is a must see.

Moderately depressing, but similar situations are probably much worse in real life.

Fabulous movie. Enjoyed the cinematography, story, and the outstanding cast. Mo'Nique deserves an Oscar nomination!

I refuse to be one of those TV people on stations you don't watch and fill this comment with hyperbolic crap that don't mean a thing up against what's on the screen. I'll just say this: I loved this movie! There, I said it; you wanna dissect it? What, you a scientist now?

Excellent movie. The actors were ALL convincing and unaffected. The story managed to engage the viewer's sympathy without being sentimental, without pulling punches. It's refreshing to know that good films are still being made.

Mo'nique was absolutely amazing!! All the actors were very good, but Mo'nique stood out. As a high school level school psychologist, I can tell you that there is more than one Precious every year at my school. This movie broke my heart, not for this Precious who made it OK, but for every Precious I have known who didn't.

Precious is a ham-fisted, self-indulgent soap opera that attempts to manipulate its audience with wannabee nitty-grittiness. The miserable result, however, is nothing more or less than the Jerry Springer Cosmos brought to the big screen - complete with television sets hurled at three day old babies cradled in their just-fell-down-a-flight-of-stairs sister /mother’s arms. Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report would probably say of Precious that it -like George W. Bush- “thinks with it GUT and not with its HEAD !!”. Take for example the climactic scene in when a social worker and Precious confront the girl’s abusive mother and we learn the details of how the sexual abuse started , the film rapidly moves into a sort of Reality TV/Game Show mode in which the audience is basically being encouraged to howl curses and throw things at the screen. Precious’ mother is a MONSTER and we in the audience, are being encouraged to have a sort of GUT ORGASM and that‘s that. “Bring’em On !!” It is Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate in a way that has probably not been seen since the 1910‘s when Hollywood (shrewdly) marketed Erich von Stroheim as “the man you love to hate”. In it’s self righteous, wildly self indulgent “gut” take on reality Precious enters the same multi-handkerchief universe of Charles Dickens The Old Curiosity Shop about which Oscar Wilde famously said “One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing”…… in other words - regardless of what may have been intended- what we end up with here is infantilized drivel; a kind of cinematic temper tantrum. To a surprising extent this is a curiously apolitical film given its subject matter of poor blacks living in squalor in Harlem. The film maker’s guiding principle seems to be - to paraphrase Marie Antoinette- “Let them eat Melodrama, Not Politics”. On the other hand maybe “apolitical” isn‘t quite the right word to describe Precious because along with being something that should have gone straight to video/DVD, Precious happens to be one of the most consistently racist depictions of African Americans to have come along in a long while. White supremacists in the audience will eat up this collection of grotesque, dumbed-down black cartoon characters that run the gamut from sadistic welfare moms and infantilized, lovable buffoons classmates to vicious street punk bullies. Not since Disney’s Uncle Remus and the Tar Baby graced the screen or a dithering, dawdling Butterfly McQueen ‘fessed up that she didn‘t “know nothing’ bout birthing babies” in Gone With the Wind have African Americans been so consistently depicted as hopelessly witless and “childlike”/childish. The question naturally arises how could Oprah Winfrey have allowed her name and prestige to be associated with what has turned out to be such a toxic piece of junk ?? One explanation is that just as there has been a long and well-earned history of White Liberal Guilt about what black people have suffered at the hands of white American society, it is now being joined by Affluent Black Bourgeois Guilt with the result that and so we find (multi-millionaire) Oprah Winfrey misguidedly promoting a thoroughly execrable piece of cinematic pulp fiction like Precious.… Expand

A movie all should see. It was hard to watch, but I couldn't take my eyes away.

From the depths to the heights of human experience, this film rides an emotional roller coaster through the life of Precious and thoses around her. Superbly acted and cast, it is a tale worthy of deep contemplation of the realities of american life and the legacy of our past.

Loved it. Almost broke down when it said "For Precious Girls Everywhere" or something like that...

One of the best films I've seen in a long time. A gritty, yet moving story of rich character development. You get to know these people, and see how a person is shaped and molded by external circumstances. Yet there's something more, we get to see that even in the most hellish of circumstances, at least in some people, there's a light, a soul that is capable of moving beyond deadly and dangerous oppression and abuse. How even the littlest bit of encouragement can light a spark.… Expand

A powerful movie that doesn't sugar-coat the horrors of life. Amazing performances and an anti-hollywood ending make this one of the best movies of the year.

It's interesting that all the critics who hated the film were New York critics. All the hype seems to have kept them from viewing the film with any objectivity.

This is a "perfect" movie. No dialogue is wasted. Nothing is force-fed to you. It doesn't slow down at all. Nothing is predictable. All of the acting is 100% flawless. I did not feel I was watching a movie. Being a New Yorker, who grew up in the 80's and is familiar with street life, this movie is true to form. These characters are real. I am so impressed by this movie. I am proud of those who made it. It is a work of art.… Expand

The reality the book/film depict are at the most dark end of human depravity. The gentleness of the soul of Precious that is sustained and triumphs through the unimaginable abuse she experienced as portrayed by Gabourey is what an Oscar should be for and granted far better than the overall quality of performance which Jennifer Hudson delivered in Dreamgirls. I still wonder to this day why she was even nominated, let alone won. If Gabourey does not win the Oscar then plainly the real [purely political] meaning and manuvering behind the Oscar organization is revealed.… Expand

I thought the movie was really good, Monique did great, So good thats it is as if Monique was showing us how to Act & giving us all some acting tips. lol The only negative is It could have had more gruesome Monique scenes & less of some of the other settings.

'Precious' is a tough movie that handles a myriad of tough situations, all focused on the single tragic protagonist, Precious. Though the movie easily could have been a weep-fest that begs for sympathy, director Lee Daniels chooses to handle every scene and situation with a delicacy that manages to never exploit the characters on screen.

i was really exhausted when the movie ended. it's a well scripted drama with lot of swearing, and Monique did a great job, i guess. but i don't know. i was really tired. it's a very depressing movie...

This movie shows how people can understand the reality of their situation (good or bad) thanks to the culture which make people critic and independent, a must, my favourite of 2010.

Aspiring work.. the story's told the right way, the acting is great, but in the end, you have an empty feeling in your gut that makes you miss your money.

This film was good, although the hype is a little bit misguided. The unfortunate thing is that it's hard to gain an emotional connection with the characters, although you agree that the abuse is disgusting, it's not the type of thing that makes one cry or really FEEL. Mo'Nique's performance was indeed amazing, as was Carey as the understated but effective social worker Ms Weiss, but other than that the film was a little hard to watch.… Expand

Best African American movie hands down. So inspiring. So emotional. The characters are full of life. Every little detail fits amazing. Not really that slow like people say it is. Precious it's so full of surprises. A must see for drama fans.

Impressively acted(especially Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'Nique), realistically directed and well scripted. Precious is a very inspirational Oscar contender. 4/4 stars.

I wanted to like it, but the clumsiness of its execution means it fails to move. The movie fails on many fronts: the "dream sequences" just confuse the plot; the characters are explored only superficially; the plot dawdles. Perhaps worst of all, the film relies on a blunt "haul on the heartstrings" approach rather than putting real effort into conveying emotion. It seems like it should be more of a touching story, but instead it is depressing violence, and left me feeling bleak, rather than uplifted.… Expand