“If there’s a Precious backlash — ‘if,’ I say — it’s due to the oppressively ugly, emotionally sadistic vibe generated by Mo’Nique‘s ‘mom from hell’ character. It’s a movie about compassion and, at the end, a ray or two of light breaking through the clouds, but the cruelty we are obliged to endure (along with poor Gabby, of course) is quite awful. Mo’Nique sells malicious monsterhood like a champ. So if — IF — there’s a certain hesitancy or resistance to Precious, it’s that.”

This was my response when The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil e-mailed me yesterday about “the shocking omission of Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire from the list of Gotham Awards nominees,” and particularly about the

alleged Precious backlash that N.Y. Post critic Lou Lumenick wrote about on 10.20.

Here’s Lumenick’s followup piece.