Both earnest and flawed, ‘Lee Daniels’ The Butler’ is a mile wide and an inch deep, skittering across the surface of history with vignettes that perfunctorily check off “Important Moments” of the decades since Eisenhower, most notably the civil rights struggles of the 60’s. All of these checkpoints are seen through the eyes of the White House butler, played with understated grace by Forest Whitaker. It’s Whitaker’s and Oprah Winfrey’s performances which pull the film up from many horrible casting choices and a plodding point-by-point narrative, and ultimately make it a film worth seeing.
Be careful when the words “Inspired By A True Story” appear on screen at the beginning of a movie. “Inspired” has a malleable definition which often means, “Much of this is entirely made up and has been shaped by Hollywood into what they think is more entertaining than re-telling the actual story.” In other words, this is a highly fictionalized tale very loosely based on an actual butler who served eight presidents over several decades.
Cecil Gaines is the butler (Whitaker) who is told to be a fly on the wall. He’s admonished to hear nothing and say nothing. Just keep the white-gloved tea service coming. Of course, that wouldn’t make for much of a story, so here Cecil finds himself present for pivotal moments in history, often being consulted by the leaders of the free world. Meanwhile, his long suffering wife (a superb performance by Oprah Winfrey) has never even gotten a tour of Cecil’s workplace, and stays home smoking cigarettes and flirting with the neighbor. Their son, a well-educated “radical” willing to fight for civil rights, heads down to Alabama, risking his life and later becoming a Black Panther, much to the chagrin of the old school father. The tension between the two boils over into some of the more compelling scenes in the film.
Shame about Daniel’s choices for the actors who play the presidents: Robin Williams as Eisenhower, James Marsden as JFK and John Cusack as Nixon are among the worst of the worst, doing the one thing that’s never supposed to happen…taking us out of the movie. A much better route would have been to cast complete unkowns—when an audience is laughing at the actors onscreen, the storytelling will always fall to the wayside.
On the other hand, the actors cast as the White House service staff, Cuba Gooding and Lenny Kravitz, bring both comic relief and naturalistic performances. Clarence Williams, in what amounts to a brief cameo, is brilliant.
In the end, it’s not so much the execution of the film as it is the ideals that it represents which make it watchable. You are hurt by the way people used to act in this country (and many still do) and you root for the right thing to happen to the right people. And by the time we get near the end, and this one man is about to meet the first African American President, there is an emotional investment in him, and it’s difficult not to swallow hard and wipe your watering eyes. This story could have been told better, more artfully, with better direction. But it remains a quintessentially American story, and one worth seeing, if for no other reason than to honor the real people who lived through it.
2 1/2 out of 4 stars
( Truth vs Hollywood BS )
BACKGROUND – born and raised in Virginia, never worked in DC hotel
NOT in Georgia cotton fields,
CHILDREN – Only one child, a son who went to Viet Nam and returned – currently alive and well; not a radical.
NOT 2 sons, one who died in Viet Nam
WIFE – probably not a lush, they met at a birthday party, died in her bed before the 2008 election.
NOT meet a hotel, die dramatically at the kitchen table, etc.
JOB – not starting as a butler and he did apply for the pantryman job
NOT recruited as a butler which is hammered on