Lee Daniels' The Butler

Butler begins as a fascinating personal biopic about a man that many people have never heard of, but soon finds himself lost between growing political program , with nothing interesting as far as history is concerned. It plays like a TV movie lame, and probably would have been much more interesting as a miniseries .Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker ) is a White House butler who served under eight presidents of the United States. The film sheds light on their history, their family problems and his involvement in the Civil Rights Act .The major flaw of this film is that its protagonist is not really that interesting. It's great that worked for many presidents , in such an important moment in the history of our country , but there really much more to him than that. The family members are much more interesting , with his wife Gloria ( Oprah Winfrey ) being a lazy alcoholic who changed her life as she grew up, and his son Louis ( David Oyelowo ) who helped fight in the civil rights movement . Make it a point from the beginning that Cecil is not a political person , and tried to get away as he could to not cause any problems . This means that it spends most of the film just to see other people argue politics.

What I worried about this movie before seeing it ended up being all that I enjoyed it more . Performance Oprah Winfrey , I hate to admit , is really cool. People have been talking Oscar nomination and honestly deserves it. I was also surprised how well they played each of the Presidents , despite miscasting some of the strangest I've seen in my life. Robin Williams as Eisenhower ? Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan freaking crazy ? Why do you think it's never a good idea? Well, it worked . Each one of them has done a very decent job with what he had to do. The problem with this, and why each could have been deceptively competent , is that none of them get more than five minutes of screen time in each movie career .I should also note that while John Cusack did a very good job playing Richard Nixon , every time he was on screen the audience laughed. It was a testament to how bad they were all misplaced , because we all know that John Cusack and he just is not right for Nixon. The only president who was something like well cast was James Marsden as Kennedy , who also happened to be one of the highlights of the film.But then you have to look at the politics of the film, which are obvious, unnecessary and downright wrong . Every Democratic president is portrayed as a god among men , whose heart is bigger than the average racist white man , which is all black no extras in the film. Lyndon Johnson ( Liev Schreiber ) is shown as a flawed but empathetic man who really cared about the civil rights movement , despite being one of the biggest racist ever to sit in the Oval Office , but a man who allegedly infamous appears in the signing of the Civil Rights Act , " I'll have those n **** rs voting Democratic for the next two hundred years. " Yes, we will promote it as deeply concerned about the movement .Meanwhile , Republicans are each shown as white stupid , angry, they only care about the political consequences of the movement. The only real scene is given Ronald Reagan was told Cecil that he thinks he is on the wrong side of Civil Rights because sanctions cut off to Africa. Not even go into why it is wrong and misleading because what matters is the politics of the situation.