Lee Daniels' The Butler (I) (2013)

As Cecil Gaines serves eight presidents during his tenure as a butler at the White House, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, and other major events affect this man's life, family, and American society.Cecil Gaines was a sharecropper's son who grew up in the 1920s as a domestic servant for the white family who casually destroyed his. Eventually striking out on his own, Cecil becomes a valet of such efficiency and discreteness in the 1950s that he becomes a butler in the White House itself. There, Cecil would serve numerous US Presidents over the decades as a passive witness of history with the American Civil Movement gaining momentum even as his family has troubles of its own. As his wife, Gloria, struggles with her addictions and his defiant eldest son, Louis, strives for a just world, Cecil must decide whether he should take action in his own way.

Review:

The Butler starts off as an intriguing personal biopic about a man many people have never heard of, but it soon finds itself lost among a steadily growing political agenda with nothing interesting going on as far as story is concerned. It plays out like a lame TV movie, and probably would have been a lot more interesting as a miniseries. Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker) was a butler in the White House who served under eight Presidents of the United States. The film sheds light on his story, his family issues and his involvement in the Civil Rights Act. The most important flaw of this film is that its main character is really not all that interesting. It's cool that he worked for so many presidents, in such an important time in our country's history, but there's really not a lot to him other than that. His family members are far more interesting, with his wife Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) being a lazy alcoholic who turned her life around as she grew older, and his son Louis (David Oyelowo) who helped fight in the Civil Rights Movement. They make a point early on that Cecil is not a political person, and tried to distance himself as much as he could so as not to cause any problems. This means that he spends pretty much the entire film just watching other people argue politics. What worried me the most about this film before seeing it ended up being everything I enjoyed the most about it. Oprah Winfrey's performance, I hate to admit, is really great. People have been talking Oscar nomination and she honestly deserves it. I was also surprised at how well each of the presidents were played, despite some of the most bizarre miscasting I've ever seen. Robin Williams as Eisenhower? Alan freaking Rickman as Ronald freaking Reagan? Why would you EVER think that's a good idea? Well, it worked. They each did a very decent job with what they were needed to do. The problem with this, and the reason they each might have been deceptively competent, is that none of them get more than five minutes of screen time each in the film's run. I also should point out that, while John Cusack did a really good job playing Richard Nixon, every single time he was on screen the audience busted out laughing. It was a testament to how poorly miscast everyone was, because we all know John Cusack and he just isn't right for Nixon. The only president that was anything close to well-cast was James Marsden as Kennedy, who also happened to be one of the major highlights of the film. But then you have to look at the politics of the film, which are blatant, unnecessary and frankly inaccurate. Every Democratic president is portrayed as a god among men, whose heart is bigger than the average racist white man, which is every non-black extra in the film. Lyndon Johnson (Liev Schreiber) is shown as a flawed but empathetic man who really cared about the Civil Rights Movement, despite being one of the biggest racists ever to sit in the Oval Office; a man who allegedly but infamously stated on signing the Civil Rights Act that, "I'll have these n****rs voting Democrat for the next two-hundred years." Yep, let's promote him as deeply caring about the movement. Meanwhile, the Republicans are each shown as stupid, angry white people who only care about the political ramifications of the movement. The only real scene Ronald Reagan is given is him telling Cecil that he thinks he's on the wrong side of Civil Rights because he cut off sanctions to Africa. I won't even get into why that's misleading and deceptive because what matters is the politics of the situation. The end of the film shows Cecil in 2008, promoting Barack Obama for president. The whole last five minutes or so are devoted to how great it was that Barack Obama was going to be president. Not just that it was a black man, but that it was Barack Obama specifically. The very last thing you hear in the film is Obama's 2008 campaign slogan, "Yes We Can," completely out of context. I get it, okay? I understand exactly how incredible and important it was that a black man became president. But that's not what's going on in this movie and that's my biggest point about the whole film. If you want to tell this story, it needs to be from the human rights perspective, not a bias, liberal agenda, Progressive political perspective. And I'd say that doing it this way takes away from the interesting story at hand, but there wasn't really that interesting of a story in the first place. What you end up with is a simple, shallow, hollow film with nothing to actually say other than, "How great is it that we've come from segregation to putting Barack Obama (not just any black man, but THAT one) in the White House?" EDIT: I've been reading a lot of interesting fact about the real "Cecil Gaines," whose real name was Eugene Allen. The more and more I read, the more infuriated I am about this film. In short, the movie intentionally fabricates facts to make white people seem more racist than they actually were, and to make Eugene Allen's life very different. It's offensive to Allen's family. It's offensive to the White House. But most importantly, it's offensive to the Civil Rights Movement itself. You can read more about the facts here: http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/the-butler.php I have also changed my rating to reflect my new feelings on the film. Ever since I wrote this review I've been feeling as if I wasn't hard enough on the film, so this isn't a new decision.

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