Review of Butter (2012) by Manny C — 17 Oct 2012

Any hopes you may have that Butter is rich in satire will rapidly melt away once you see it. There's no kick to it. Jennifer Garner is Laura Pickler, an Iowa housewife whose husband, Bob (my husband Ty Burrell form tv's Modern Family) has consistently won the state's annual butter-sculpting (you read right) contest for fifteen years. But Bob is now being asked to step aside and make way for new blood, new blood like Destiny (Yara Shahidi), an 11-year-old black foster child who's a natural. Laura is so incredulous she decides to enter herself in the contest just to show Destiny what's what and keep the butter prize where it belongs.

You can see where things are headed in the script by Jason Micallef. The butter contest mirrors that of the presidential race, and of course the conservative entries fight really dirty, or perhaps it just looks that way in contrast to Destiny, representative of liberal inclusiveness.

It's so obvious, you'll roll your eyes. Especially when you see Hugh Jackman as car dealer Boyd Bolton, a randy gent. Brit director Jim Field Smith has never met a un-subtle joke he didn't like, ignoring the fact that good satire needs something that sticks. But the script is full of distractions, such as a stripper (Olivia Wilde) who beds Bob and then enters to compete against Laura in the butter contest. Garner is good, she plays the absurd set-up how it should be played, but she's mired in a movie that can best be described as Christopher Guest-lite. Best in show it's not.