The film stars Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'Nique, alongside Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Sherri Shepherd, and Lenny Kravitz.

After Precious' screening at Sundance in January 2009, Tyler Perry announced that he and Oprah Winfrey would be providing promotional assistance to the film, which was released through Lionsgate Entertainment.

In 1987, 16-year-old Claireece Precious Jones lives in New York City's Harlem neighborhood with her unemployed mother, Mary, who has long subjected her to physical, sexual, and verbal abuse.

Planning to complete a GED test to receive a high-school diploma equivalency, followed by college, Precious walks into the city with her children, ready to start a new life with a brighter future.

[14] In an interview with AMC, he noted that reading the book brought back a memory from his childhood of a young abused girl who knocked on his family's door, claiming that her mom was going to kill her.

Daniels recalls that the incident was the first time he saw his mother frightened, specifically noting the helplessness of the situation, and stating "she knew that she'd have to send this little girl home, and that was what disturbed her — that she couldn't save her.

[17] Precious had, in total, thirteen producers: Daniels, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Heller, Tyler Perry, Lisa Cortés, Gary Magness, Valerie Hoffman, Asger Hussain, Mark G. Mathis, Andrew Sforzini, Bergen Swason, Simone Sheffield and Sarah Siegel-Magness.

Despite the dark subject matter, Sidibe has stated that the mood on the set was lighthearted, that "Every day was a party" and that the cast would frequently sing and tell jokes to "lighten the atmosphere.

[21] The soundtrack accompanying the film featured a compilation of original songs and covers with artists such as LaBelle (a pop group composed of Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash, and Patti LaBelle), Donna Allen, Jean Carn, Sunny Gale, MFSB, Grace Hightower, Queen Latifah and Mahalia Jackson.

[20] Winfrey used her status as both a celebrity and a media personality to give the film what was described by Ben Child of The Guardian, as a "high-profile promotional push.

[1][31] The film saw a 214 percent increase in its second week of release, earning $5,874,628 at 174 theaters, which catapulted it up to third place in that weekend's box office, with a per-theater average of $33,762.

Brandon Grey of Box Office Mojo described Precious as having had a "robust expansion" in its second week of release, and he confirmed that the film holds the record for having the second-highest grossing weekend for a movie playing at fewer than 200 sites, behind only Paranormal Activity.

The site's consensus is that "Precious is a grim yet ultimately triumphant film about abuse and inner-city life, largely bolstered by exceptional performances from its cast.

[37] John Anderson of Variety said "to simply call it harrowing or unsparing doesn't quite cut it," having felt that the film is "courageous and uncompromising, a shaken cocktail of debasement and elation, despair and hope.

[...] It's a potent and moving experience, because by the end you feel you've witnessed nothing less than the birth of a soul", and felt that the "final scene of revelation" between Sidibe's and Mo'Nique's characters was strong enough to be able to leave viewers "tearful, shaken, [and] dazed with pity and terror.

[40] Ebert described Mo'Nique's performance as being "frighteningly convincing" and felt that "the film is a tribute to Sidibe's ability to engage our empathy" because she "completely creates the Precious character."

"[40] Ebert praised Daniels because, rather than casting the actors for their names, "he was able to see beneath the surface and trust that they had within the emotional resources to play these women, and he was right.

"[40] Betsy Sharkey, of the Los Angeles Times described the film as being a "rough-cut diamond... [A] rare blend of pure entertainment and dark social commentary, it is a shockingly raw, surprisingly irreverent and absolutely unforgettable story.

"[43] Mary Pols of Time praised the film's fantasy sequences for being able to show the audience a "joyous Wizard of Oz energy" that is able to "open the door into Precious's mind in a way even [the author] Sapphire couldn't.

"[45] Scott Mendelson, also of The Huffington Post, felt that when you put the "glaring issues aside," the film "still works as a potent character study and a glimpse inside a world we'd rather pretend does not exist in America."

[46] Critic Jack Mathews wrote: "Without being familiar with the source material, you really have no idea how much work went into the adaptation or how well it was done.... 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire'...

First-time screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher did yeoman's work turning Sapphire's graphic, idiomatic novel into a coherent and inspiring story about the journey of an abused Harlem teenager.

"[47] Erin Aubry Kaplan wrote on Salon.com that the question posed by the film is how to assess the "hopeless story of a ghetto teen... in the Age of Obama."

But just as Push achieves an eloquence that makes it far more than a fictional diary of extreme dysfunction, so too does Precious avoid the traps of well-meaning, preachy lower-depths realism.

It howls and stammers, but it also sings...Inarticulate and emotionally shut down, her massive body at once a prison and a hiding place, Precious is also perceptive and shrewd, possessed of talents visible only to those who bother to look.

Stevens noted that, while the film is about improvement and self-actualization, "it wields an awfully large cudgel", in contrast to Scott's view of balance: "unsparing force (though not in overly graphic detail)".

Perhaps sharing Mathews's view regarding the daunting challenge of adapting the harsh story of Push, Stevens observed that "Daniels and Fletcher no doubt intended for their film to lend a voice to the kind of protagonist too often excluded from American movie screens: a poor, black, overweight single mother from the inner city.

Writing for the New York Press, Armond White compared the film to the landmark but controversial The Birth of a Nation (1915) as "demeaning the idea of black American life," calling it "an orgy of prurience" and the "con job of the year.

"[55] Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian that the film catalogues a "horrendous, unending nightmare of abuse" and then abruptly turns into something resembling the 1980s musical Fame.

[56] Sukhdev Sandhu wrote in The Daily Telegraph that he found the film "a dispiriting mix of cliché and melodrama," although he acknowledged that Precious does feature some superb acting.