Oprah Winfrey commands the attention and loyalty of millions of adoring disciples.  The books she selects for her famous book club enjoy unprecedented boosts in sales.  The medical remedies and social taboos featured on her television show immediately spike on internet searches following a broadcast.  The media mogul even helped elect the nation’s very first African-American president.  So when Oprah decides to throw her weight behind a film, you better believe people are going to see it.  And see it they have.

The arduously titled “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” has broken box office records in its short run in theaters.  It’s averaging over $100,000 gross per screen, and it’s total gross is the highest ever for a film opening in fewer than 100 theaters.  Impressive, even for a film backed by Oprah.  But what about this film is driving the exodus to the cinema?  There’s got to be more to it than the support of the Queen of All Media.  What is it about this little film with virtually no well-known stars, a relatively inexperienced director and a shoe-string budget that’s eliciting such strong reactions?  Some are calling it the most important film of the decade.  Others accuse it of insensitivity and of perpetuating racial stereotypes.  Not since Spike Lee’s 1989 landmark “Do the Right Thing” has a film stirred up such impassioned debate.  It’s unfortunate, however, that neither camp has recognized the film’s real problems.

“Precious” centers on the utterly miserable existence of a destitute, illiterate, unrelentingly abused and morbidly obese 17-year-old African-American girl living in 1987 Harlem played by Gabourey ‘Gabby’ Sidibe.  Her rapist, absentee father has not once, but twice impregnated her, infecting her with the HIV virus in the process.  Her mother, played by the uncharacteristically diabolical Mo’Nique, is an impossibly damaged human being so emotionally mangled that even the slightest of Precious’ behaviors she deems irritating throws her into a fit of rage wherein she verbally, physically, and even sexually abuses the unthinkably downtrodden heroine.  Director Lee Daniels paints a picture so indelibly bleak it’s hard imagine such a place could exist in the physical world.  But some variation of Precious’ hell on earth is all too real for many minorities in this country — a fact Daniels makes his top priority to illuminate.

But at its core, “Precious” is really nothing more than an above average movie about a disadvantaged youth struggling to overcome her misery-laden lot in life.  The message of the film is that minorities in America, at least those lucky enough, can overcome the daunting gauntlet of a failed system.  It’s not a bad message, per se, just a stock Hollywood moral that misses the bigger picture entirely.  Are we supposed to cheer that a fat, abused, illiterate, black girl from Harlem managed to find an alternative school with a light-skinned, lesbian teacher dedicated enough to help Precious help herself?  Why should Precious need to find such a school in the first place?  While I suppose we should be happy for Precious, the film unforgivably allows us to forget about the social worker who couldn’t help her, the public schools that failed her, the welfare that keeps her mother from doing…anything, and the fact that she’s never offered any type of counseling for the ungodly abuse she’s endured every day of her 17 years.

Instead of telling the story of one girl from the ghetto who got lucky, how about offering a way out of the system that produces thousands of Preciouses every day?  Why not tackle the gross inequalities and discrimination inherent in our unspoken class system?  The answer certainly isn’t a conservative-style privatization of essential services.  The last thing we need is more profit-driven entities posing as contributors to America’s social and economic health.  But to deny the obvious need for reform is naive.  And for all its harrowing imagery and boutique realism, “Precious” is steeped in naivete — blind to the problems behind the problems.  Things are looking up for Precious by the end of the film, too bad for the millions of others shut out from even the faintest rays of hope.

Score: 3/5