This year, we’ve seen superheroes, aliens and boy wizards explode onto the big screen, but where have all the real action movies been? I’m talking about the ones featuring people, not pixels. The ones where the actor dangles perilously from the world’s tallest building, and not from a wire in front the world’s widest green screen. What happened to those action movies? Don’t they get made any more?

Well, it turns [...]

“The other day I cried”, mumbles Claireece ‘Precious’ Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) to the audience.

Fair enough, too. Precious is a morbidly obese, illiterate and pregnant African-American teen living in 1987 Harlem, surviving off the welfare collected by her disgustingly abusive mother. On occasion, her drug-addicted father drops in to rape her. He is also the father of both her children, the first of whom has Down’s Syndrome. If there were a checklist of all the issues a teenager could possibly have, it’s safe to say poor Precious would tick each and every box.

“But guess what…” snaps Precious in response to her earlier sentiment. “F*** that other day. That’s why God or whoever make new days.”

It’s this remarkably optimistic attitude present throughout Lee Daniels’ second feature that turns an otherwise traumatic take on the human condition into a surprisingly uplifting drama. No matter what unimaginable hurdles Precious must face, hope for her is never lost.

“But guess what…” snaps Precious in response