Your guide to Precious, featuring Mariah Carey as a social worker

The US film Precious, the hard-hitting story of a 16-year girl who lives with her abusive mother and is pregnant for the second time by her absent father, opens in the UK on January 29. Critically acclaimed and tipped for Oscars, the film also features singer Mariah Carey (right) as a social worker.

Carey has described how she had to “de-glamorise” to play the “hard-knock” social worker who attempts to help the main character Precious. The film has since been nominated for Golden Globe awards.

In December, Community Care readers were offered the chance to attend an exclusive advance screening of the film. One of the attendees, social worker Penny Dalrymple was impressed, describing the film as “engrossing” but also “disturbing”.

She wrote: “On two occasions I myself, who doesn’t get scared at the most scary of movies, winced, squirmed and recoiled a bit from what I had seen and heard.”

Community Care’s content editor Ruth Smith was less complimentary, suggesting that the social worker played by Carey was not portrayed in a positive light, saying “Mariah Carey only made brief appearances and failed to probe beneath the service.”

Watch the Precious trailer

Precious reviewed

Time: “Too powerful for tears”

Rotten Tomatoes: Meta review

Empire: Precious review

Rolling Stone: Precious Review

The Guardian: How did America fall in love with Precious?

 

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