Review of The Butler (2013) by John A — 19 Jan 2014

The Butler is one of those movies that is birlliant in some ways, but trips all over itself in its arrogance, its invention and its biases. The movie could have been truly excellent as it is based on a true story, but so loosely that it simply made a mockery of the real story.

The gimmickry and ad hoc story lines, like the father's murder, the mother's rape, the ficticious son's death in war, the only semi-fictious son's mostly fictious rebellioiusness and black advocacy, the wife's affairs and drunkeness.

......none of which existed in real life. Much of the movie was spent on the son, which diverted the story from its usefulness as a "fly on the wall" commentary on 30 years of Presidential history.

Rather than explore the butler's relationships with and stories about the Presidents, there are only very small, and often inaccurate, even inexplicable interactions that make one scratch their head.

None of the Presidents seemed all too believable, with Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan being one of the the most believable of all of the real characters, mostly characatured to the extreme. But Reagan's portrayal rose to extremely annoying as they made a mockery of the South Africa sanctions and portrayed Reagan's position as racism rather than a fear of communism taking over the country.

Further, the skipping ahead past Ford and Carter, apparently because there was no racial drama of value was rather frustrating. As it turns out, the only stories worth telling from a black man are those that involve race and nothing else.

One could almost forgive the lack of interesting anecdotes if it weren't for the ridiculous waste of time spent on the butler's totally fictionalized personal life that would have no doubt been seen as an insult had he lived to see the movie.