Every once in a while, a movie comes along that I wish would manifest itself into a physical being just so I could punch it in the face. The Butler falls quite comfortably into that category. This obnoxious, preachy, self-important load of bullshit is one of the worst movies of the year, if not one of the worst of all time. Let me give you a tip: If Oprah says that you should see a movie, never, ever see it. Along with this year’s 42, this movie’s sole purpose is to make white liberals feel guilty. Sorry, Lee Daniels-- If I want to feel guilty about racial inequality, I’ll drive over to Richmond.
The Butler is the true (HA!) story of Cecil Gaines, a black butler at the White House who saw through several presidencies and got out as fast as he could when Reagan came in (I don’t blame him). As you might guess from the story I just outlined, this movie is hopelessly manipulative. There are barely any scenes where the characters are allowed to just develop without the weight of the fucking world being placed on their shoulders. Every black character in this movie is so ridiculously noble it hurts. I was literally screaming at the screen “OH MY GOD, WE GET IT ALREADY, WHITE PEOPLE ARE EVIL! FUCK YOU!” I started to feel like an asshole for hating this movie, but then I realized that that’s EXACTLY what it wants me to do: Be guilt-tripped into saying that hundreds of years of abuse towards African-Americans somehow allows this movie a pass when it comes to characters, dialogue, plot, etc.
From the get-go, this monotonous piece of shit is out to make people wet their pants over discrimination and “we shall overcome” crap. Yes, the civil rights movement was a great thing. So doesn’t it deserve a better movie? Every moment in this film is perfectly concocted to make white people feel sorry for something that PRESENT-DAY WHITES HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH, regardless of historical accuracy. At the beginning of the film, Gaines is a young boy on a cotton plantation. He sees his mother get raped, and when his father stands up to the white man who raped her, he gets killed. A quick Google search will reveal that this never actually happened, and was the result of Lee Daniels taking a “creative license” with the story. In other words, he made shit up to make people feel bad. What a great fucking director.
Grown-up Gaines is played by Forest Whitaker, whom I now cannot see onscreen without thinking of the “Something bad happened here” scene from Species. He’s not a very good actor in my opinion, and always speaks in a raspy, halting voice that makes him very unenjoyable to watch. It also doesn’t help that in the movie, his character is married to Oprah. FUCKING OPRAH. I could go on for weeks about how much I hate this bitch. She has built a personality cult around herself that brainwashes middle-aged women in a constant barrage of intrusive TV shows, TV specials, annoying magazines, and movies like this. It’s pretty clear from the get-go that she’s only in this to draw a crowd, as she is a horrible fucking actress. Every scene she’s in gets a 0/10 from me. Why someone thought she should be cast in ANYTHING is beyond me.
The presidents are okay, but almost all of the most important parts of their presidencies are omitted in favor of focusing only on the civil rights movement. We don’t even get to see Nixon (John Cusack) resign. A lot of them are ridiculously miscast (Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan?), not to mention that Gerald Ford gets approximately zero seconds of screen time. The film tries to be a Forrest Gump-style historical drama, in which the main character inadvertently affects the course of history by meeting random people. But compared to this, Forrest Gump is a masterpiece. It never tried to be taken seriously by anyone-- There’s no way one guy could possibly have that much impact on the world, especially if he has an IQ that places him well within the “potato” range. But at least that movie had a sense of fun about it. The Butler shows us countless scenarios where Gaines influences important decisions by the presidents, and expects us to believe that it is all legitimate and accurate. This enrages me.
And then there’s the dialogue, which is all poorly written. Every black character is so ridiculously noble, and all of their conversations are epic clashes of ideology and beliefs. There is no room left to breathe for the audience as we are smothered with (and force-fed) the most obvious message in movie history. And just when I thought it couldn’t get worse... THE ENDING. OH MY GOD, THE ENDING. After skipping over Carter, the Bushes, and Clinton, we end up in 2008, where Gaines and Oprah are getting ready to vote for Barack Obama. It is such manipulative, trite, pathetic, in-your-face liberal retardation. I felt like I was watching an ad for the NAACP. Whitaker looks at the TV, and when Obama wins, a single, solitary tear rolls down his cheek. And it’s perfectly obvious that he only voted for Obama because he was black, and not for any policy reasons. This is arguably just as bad as NOT voting for Obama because he is black. FUCK! AND THEN OPRAH DIES, AND I’M SUPPOSED TO FEEL BAD?!? HAHAHAHA! FUCK YOU, MOVIE!
Final Score for the enormous shitfest known as The Butler: THE COVETED DIEGO TUTWEILLER NEGATIVE ZERO OUT OF TEN STARS! This movie is absolute dogshit, presented to the audience as if it somehow exposes great truths about society. Nothing in this entire fuckfest works even remotely adequately. The camerawork is boring, the characters are dull and underdeveloped, the writing is atrocious, and its message is delivered with such sledgehammer force that nobody ends up actually giving a shit. The worst movie of the year so far.
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