The Butler – Film Review

One man’s tenure as a butler at the White House, as the civil rights movement, Vietnam and other major events affect his life, family and American society, makes for a good, meaty subject. But Lee Daniels’s ambitious film, though warm hearted, well intentioned and grappling with major issues, lacks depth and focus.

It’s still quite a good, entertaining movie, but, in its eagerness to address a wide audience, it kind of fumbles and lets the ball drop. It would work better in a book. Trying to have universal appeal, the movie’s bit soapy, bland, middle-of-the road and inevitably rambling as it tries to tackle too many years in one man’s long life.

With a slew of big star names, the main stars are Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey as the real-life White House butler Cecil Gaines and his wife Gloria. They are a bit hammy, increasingly so as the film goes on and they get old, but nevertheless they’re just fine, sometimes quite impressive. It’s a bit of an acting schlep and they’re up for it. David Oyelowo is good as their activist son Louis, and Cuba Gooding Jr and Terrence Howard are helpful as Cecil’s brother and neighbour. It’s very nice to see Cuba with something to do in a major movie again.

The US President roles give some stars quite exciting character cameos to have a crack at. Weirdly cast John Cusack and Alan Rickman surprisingly triumph as Nixon and Reagan, among the eight US Presidents Cecil serves. James Marsden and Live Schreiber are nobody’s idea of John F Kennedy and LBJ either, but they giving striking performances too.

I liked Robin Williams less. To be honest, I thought he was playing Theodore Roosevelt and it turned out to be Dwight D Eisenhower. I got very confused with the narrative, obviously. I got very confused with the movies, too apparently, as Williams of course played Roosevelt (much better) in Night at the Museum. I’m guessing that people with a shaky sense of history or knowledge of the past at all (that’s pretty much all of us nowadays) will be totally up the creek with this movie.

All the actors’ make-up is exceptionally good, which is especially useful to suggest either the characters’ ageing or the actors merging into a famous historical character.

On the plus side, this at least it isn’t depressing and upsetting like 12 Years a Slave. But then it’s nothing like as good a movie. Even so, it needed more rigorous treatment than this, and it comes over as an up-market TV movie. It’s the kind of film that will play well on TV, its real home. It’s a shame that top actors like Vanessa Redgrave and Alex Pettyfer are wasted in totally underwritten roles, so much so that their actions are incomprehensible here. And, exactly why are Brit actors again the bad guys? These are pantomime villains, hardly credible at all.

In the end, for all the excellent hard work put into it, the movie comes over as rather heavy handed in both the writing (Danny Strong, Wil Haygood) and the direction (by Lee Daniels, who made the much better Precious). Inevitably a long, extended episodic film of either tear-jerking or quirky vignettes, unable by its own design to settle long enough on any one of its promising situations and deal with them fully and satisfyingly, The Butler ends up in the well-meaning, interesting category.

I counted 39 producers on the film – is this a record? Why?

Expect Oscar nominations, for supporting acting and makeup.

It’s Oprah’s first proper acting since Beloved in 1998. I know she’s busy, but it’s nice to have her back in the movies. She’s 60 on January 29, 2014.

(C) Derek Winnert 2013 derekwinnert.com