Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013) * *

Directed by:  Lee Daniels

Starring:  Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Robin Williams, John Cusack, James Marsden, Alan Rickman, Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, David Oyelowo

Sooner or later, an article or blog will be published by some smarty-pants who wishes to discredit all of the allegedly true events which take place in The Butler.     Almost all films "inspired by a true story", as The Butler is, will receive such treatment.   ( i.e.  Richard Nixon never visited the White House kitchen hawking votes for the 1960 election!)     Movies are the last place anyone should go if they expect to witness facts.     Movies are about emotional truths, not cold, hard facts.      The Hurricane (1999) strayed so much from the facts of Ruben Carter's life it was practically fiction, but it was nonetheless a powerful movie.    The Butler never rises to the level of powerful.   It seems to have been made using cliches we've seen in other movies.     I was always aware of the mechanisms working, which kept me at arm's length when it should've been absorbing me into this man's life.

The Butler is Cecil Gaines, played by Forest Whitaker as a man who learned very early in life that he had to wear different faces in order to do his job and work through life as a black man in racially segregated America.    The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments provided equal rights for freed slaves on paper, but don't tell that to certain areas of the South, where black people and white people drank from separate water fountains and dined in separate areas in the same restaurant.      Cecil is able to work within the system although he is naturally conflicted about it.     He is soon offered a position as a butler in the White House, mostly because of his ability to stay neutral on political matters.    "We don't tolerate politics in the White House," says his employer, which draws laughs of course.   

Cecil has a nice home in Washington, DC and a wife Gloria (Winfrey) and two sons, one whom decides to take part in the civil rights movement that was growing in late 1950's America.     We see many juxtapositions between Cecil performing his duties as an almost anonymous servant to a white President, while his son Louis (Oyelowo) takes part in sit-ins, freedom rides, and spends a good part of his college life in jail.      He even hooks up with the Black Panthers late in the 60's, which causes a lenghty estrangment between he and his father.

During Cecil's tenure, his wife takes to alcohol and an ill-advised affair with a neighbor (Terrance Howard) because Cecil spends so much time at work.     Perhaps this conflict did occur in real life, but it seems more like a cliche we've seen in countless movies before.      Gloria spends the first half her scenes with either a drink, a cigarette, or both in her hand.      This conflict is neatly ended after John F. Kennedy's assassination.     A little too neatly.  

Whitaker is an actor of considerable screen presence who ably expresses his inner conflicts with a look or nonverbal cues.     The trouble is the movie doesn't spend nearly enough time on him.     I would find it fascinating to learn about the daily routine of a White House butler.     How does it feel to be steps away from the most powerful person on Earth?      The film sidesteps this, choosing to concentrate more on the growing estrangement between Cecil and Louis as their lives take separate paths.    You kinda sorta know that Cecil and Louis will eventually make up, so why not show us things we haven't seen before?    

There are numerous scenes in which Cecil finds himself in the middle of Oval Office meetings where policies that shaped our nation were presented.     Sometimes the President even seeks his counsel, especially John F. Kennedy, and their conversation leads directly to Kennedy's push to end segregation.      This device rings totally false.     Cecil finds himself in so many crucial meetings at just the right times that I felt I was watching Forrest Gump all over again.  

Is it possible to have too many famous cameos in one movie?     Robin Williams, Jane Fonda, Alan Rickman, John Cusack, Vanessa Redgrave, Liev Schrieber, and Mariah Carey all appear briefly in the movie, but I was distracted by the "Hey, there's (fill in star here)!" effect.     Cusack wears a prothstetic nose as Nixon, but he is simply too young to be playing the Nixon who is days away from resigning.     I felt it was Cusack playing Nixon, rather than watching Nixon on the screen.     I had the same problem with Oprah Winfrey's performance.      Other than fret and moan that her husband is away from home a lot, there isn't much character there to distract me from the belief that I was watching Oprah and not Gloria.     

The Butler never truly takes off.    It is bogged down with being Important.   It covers a lot of ground, including Cecil's family life, all major political issues between 1957-present, and all relevant civil rights movement landmarks.    It just doesn't bring them much to life and goes nowhere in particular.   I viewed an Onion movie review of this film and the phony critic continually mentions how IMPORTANT The Butler is.    He was joking, but I don't think he was that far off.