Lee Daniels' The Butler (Ibid, 2013)

[Matt]

Taking a tip from Michael Cimino, the title is now Lee Daniels' The Butler. Not to be confused with Lee Daniels, The Butler.

[warren oates]

Wonder if they'll be able to play some games with that amended "Lee Daniels'" possessive on the title, like printing it super small to de-emphasize it on posters and billboards, or using different fonts and colors, the way, for example, that the O.J. Simpson murder victims families did with "IfI did it: Confessions of a Killer."

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

One of the conditions is that the "Lee Daniels'" part has to be at least 75% the size of "The Butler."

[Brianruns10]

I remain unconvinced this is a real movie. I mean, it can't be real, can it? The trailer looks like a Funny or Die parody trailer. I mean John Cusack as Nixon??? This has to be a put on.

[mfunk9786]

Wow, Ibid. The English nerd in me is loving that

[The Narrator Returns]

The Butler is most likely another title in the long line of Oscar-baiting prestige pictures which the Academy forgot about come January. It may get nominations for Best Makeup and Best Costume Design, but that's most likely going to be it. The performances are, for the most part, fine (with a few notable exceptions, and not of the good kind), but unlikely to garner Oscar consideration. It's safe and middlebrow, but not memorable enough to stick in voters' minds. It's the next Hyde Park at Hudson, The Soloist, and many others.

With all that in mind, it's not that bad. It's okay, but not exceptional in any way. It does have some bracing sequences (namely, a sit-in intercut with the titular butler setting the White House table), but most of the time, it just sits there, and then politely excuses itself when the film ends. I like Forest Whitaker a lot as an actor, and he's certainly the right man to play the part of someone whose job is to stay as invisible as possible, given that his trademark is quiet dignity. Oprah Winfrey doesn't get much to do at all as the butler's wife except drink and dance, but she does fine. In a phrase I though I'd never utter, Cuba Gooding Jr. gives one of the best performances in the film as the butler's coworker at the White House. David Oyelowo does a good job as the butler's more revolutionary son, although he's mostly a plot convenience to bring the Black Panthers, Freedom Riders, and Martin Luther King into the story. Terrence Howard gets almost nothing to do besides act drunk and hit on Oprah's character. The rest of the cast is where some of the film's problems lie.

This film is distractingly star-studded. From the beginning, the precedent is set. Mariah Carey plays the butler's mother, and she gets no lines except a scream while she's being raped. The rapist, the plantation owner whose workers include the young butler and his family, is played by Alex Pettyfer, best known to me as Channing Tatum's protégé in Magic Mike. And as if that wasn't enough, Vanessa Redgrave shows up for maybe three minutes at the person who gives young butler a job in the house after Pettyfer shoots his father to death. Then, we get to the Presidents. Robin Williams as Dwight Eisenhower fares the worst, if only because he gets two scenes, and he does little in either one of them. James Marsden as JFK is the least distracting of the bunch, although he also doesn't get a whole lot to do. Liev Schreiber as LBJ puts on a ridiculous Texas accent, and then we get to see him on the toilet in one scene. John Cusack as Richard Nixon is downright laughable, and Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan isn't far behind (you can almost hear him struggle to keep his British accent in check). Every President in the movie is a nothing character, and the movie would probably be better without them, or at least with less well-known actors playing them. And surely, Lee Daniels would know that Philip Baker Hall and Dan Hedaya are still around to do Nixon again.

Grade: C+

- There's one scene in the film that has such an obvious conclusion that the conclusion might as well come at the front of the scene. We see Whitaker and Oprah dancing to Soul Train, when Oprah says something about their son (who went off to Vietnam) not sending them a letter. Can you guess where that leads?

- Oh, and I almost forget to mention that this movie feels long. It isn't that long (under two hours), but it feels like it goes on forever at times. At some points, you'd think that the movie is almost over, but in reality, it hadn't even gotten to Richard Nixon yet. Man of Steel had better pacing than this movie.

[Professor Wagstaff]

Definitely a slog, though I was sort of with the film for maybe the first 30 or 40 minutes as the Cecil character is established, showing how assimilation and invisibility was the only way for the black community to reach The White House in that time. The concept has more compelling potential than I realized, but like the butler character, the film chooses to placate and be unassuming about politics rather that have any bite to it. I shouldn't be surprised, Danny Strong's other political melodramas were fast food consumption for the grandma audience (who gave it a big applause at the end when I saw it today).

The movie pays too much attention to Cecil's home life. I'm not sure to what of that is fictional or not, but most of it seems like boilerplate conflict between father and son, husband and wife. The movie begins to go through its checklist of major cultural events of each era (remember the gas crisis?), stumbling into 'Mr. Holland's Opus' territory. I'm conflicted about feeling frustrated with the movie knowing full well that, at best, it was going to be a decent Hallmark film. I suppose that initial concept intrigued me enough to make all the contrived elements that much less palatable.

[knives]

The home stuff is probably very fictionalized considering that they changed the lead's name.