I wanted to see this partly because Jane Fonda plays Nancy Reagan. 'Hanoi Jane' as the most ultra-conservative First Lady! In the event Fonda, who is only on screen for about 60 seconds, provides a pleasing caricature of the Lady In Red. Alan Rickman is equally improbable as Reagan, made up so that he looks uncannily like Ronnie whilst still looking (and sounding) like Alan Rickman. Robin Williams's Eisenhower is also little more than a cameo, like John Cusack's creepy Nixon and Liev Schreiber's toned-down LBJ. James Marsden and Minke Kelly get the most screen time as the Kennedys and are not the most convincing re-creators of Camelot. Ford, Carter and Obama are only shown in TV clips and Clinton and the Bushes don't even get a look-in.
In fact, all the Presidents are both crucial and inconsequential to the main ('inspired by a true story') theme, which is how Cecil Gaines, a share-cropper's son from the Deep South, became a butler to successive tenants in the White House. Forest Whitaker anchors the story with a rock-solid performance, ageing decades in the course of the movie. The script's central focus is on Cecil's loyal wife Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) and their difficult relationship with their eldest son Louis (David Oyelowo), who joins the Civil Rights movement almost from its inception and gets beaten and jailed many times as successive administrations slowly set about fulfilling Martin Luther King's great and noble Dream.
This is, in its way, a great and noble concept but. despite a few references to Gandhi (the man rather than the biopic), THE BUTLER has the feel of soap opera (Soap Oprah!), reminiscent of the ROOTS mini-series. Gloria's battle with alcohol inevitably brings Sue Ellen Ewing to mind. The pace is necessarily rushed, history (Civil Rights, Vietnam, Riots) condensed to docudrama moments. The black actors are the movie's greatest strength, and you do leave the cinema with a powerful sense of the triumphant journey Black Americans have made, from the plantations to the Oval Office. Where this Reader's Digest version of History falls short, perhaps, is in not showing how many blacks still have lives in the ghettos and the boondocks just as bleak and brutal as they were in the cotton fields of the nineteenth century.
In fact, all the Presidents are both crucial and inconsequential to the main ('inspired by a true story') theme, which is how Cecil Gaines, a share-cropper's son from the Deep South, became a butler to successive tenants in the White House. Forest Whitaker anchors the story with a rock-solid performance, ageing decades in the course of the movie. The script's central focus is on Cecil's loyal wife Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) and their difficult relationship with their eldest son Louis (David Oyelowo), who joins the Civil Rights movement almost from its inception and gets beaten and jailed many times as successive administrations slowly set about fulfilling Martin Luther King's great and noble Dream.
This is, in its way, a great and noble concept but. despite a few references to Gandhi (the man rather than the biopic), THE BUTLER has the feel of soap opera (Soap Oprah!), reminiscent of the ROOTS mini-series. Gloria's battle with alcohol inevitably brings Sue Ellen Ewing to mind. The pace is necessarily rushed, history (Civil Rights, Vietnam, Riots) condensed to docudrama moments. The black actors are the movie's greatest strength, and you do leave the cinema with a powerful sense of the triumphant journey Black Americans have made, from the plantations to the Oval Office. Where this Reader's Digest version of History falls short, perhaps, is in not showing how many blacks still have lives in the ghettos and the boondocks just as bleak and brutal as they were in the cotton fields of the nineteenth century.