I just saw this movie and I have to say that Oprah sure can chew the scenery. Also Lee Daniels does not play the Butler because I had to Google it to see why his name was attached. The movie is basically a retelling of the civil rights movement through the eyes of a butler that served 8 presidents.
For the most part the movie is very open about its view that American is a bad place full of hateful white people but sometimes there are good white people from time to time. The movie traces the life of Cecil who is played by Forest Whitaker in a role that might get him another Oscar. He does it in a very understated manner of a person that wears two masks. One to the people he serves (basically white people) and the other to his family and friends (all black people.) There is only two parts where he loses control and freaks out. In some ways he reminded me of Carson on Downton Abbey. Always in control and always a professional with a good heart and a sense of humor both of which he keeps hidden.
Cecil is raised in near slavery where a white person can kill a black person and there is no repercussions. He even sees the bodies of two lynched guys and knows how bad it is down South and knows he needs to escape. He moves up the ladder like many people in America and goes from picking cotton (where his father is summarily killed by the son of the plantation owner) to being a butler in a southern hotel. He then moves from there to a fancy Washington hotel and then finally moves to the White House after catching the eye of the head of the staff there. It is a very American story of upward movement that is told fairly well for the most part.
As Cecil serves the 8 Presidents in Office his son takes up the banner of Civil Rights through the entire history of the black struggle in America. He is kind of like the Forest Gump of the civil rights movement. He starts off doing the sit-in in segregated lunch counters as a college kid at Fisk. Then he moves on to the Freedom Riders where he is menaced by angry whites who burns their bus. He then is sprayed with a fire hose and attacked by dogs in Bull Connors' Alabama. After that he gets with Martin Luther King and hangs out with him at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis.
There is a nice scene where King actually sticks up for black help and tells the son how important people with his Dad's job is to their movement. The son then joins the Black Panther Party with his girlfriend who sports a giant afro but leaves when he can't bring himself to murder people. Finally, he runs for office in Tennessee and eventually wins. Most of the time he is in conflict with his father and they eventually become estranged when the son does not attend his brothers funeral after the brother is killed in Vietnam. As soon as the son says he was going to join up to protect his country in Vietnam I knew he was doomed.
Oprah does a decent job as Cecil's wife. She is an alcoholic at first that cheats on Cecil with the next door neighbor because Cecil is home late after working in the White House. Oprah does a pretty good job of making herself look unappealing and smokes and drinks throughout the movie with abandon. She has good rapport with Whitaker and their chemistry works on screen. She is pretty much a spectator as various things happen around her.
Finally, the Presidents are played in a series of cameos by various actors. They say a few lines and do a few comical things and that was it. We see LBJ on the toilet, Nixon trying to get black votes and looking creepy, JFK looking Presidential as friend to the black man (there was an interesting scene when Jackie O sat in the White House and wouldn't change out of her blood-soaked clothing,) and finally Reagan (who is played by the British actor that played Severus Snape in Harry Potter) who looks like a decent enough guy that doesn't want to put pressure on South Africa.
One interesting scene during the Reagan-era is where Cecil argues with the guy that hired him for equal pay for the black staff and the guy threatens to fire him. Then Cecil says to take it up with the President if he doesn't want to make the pay even between blacks and whites at the White House. There were some cheers and clapping from the audience after that scene.
However, they stick-it to Reagan right afterward when Cecil is invited to a State Dinner by Nancy. Cecil says that they were invited as a prop and not as a reward for decades of service and is bitter about what happened. They make a point of showing him and his wife as the only black people at the State Dinner and they of course felt powerfully out of place. He then scowls at the young kids who visit the White House who he serves cookies to instead of with a big smile like earlier in the movie. The whole reaction to being invited to the State Dinner rubbed me the wrong way but I guess that is how the character felt.
Finally, the end of the movie we see Cecil waiting to vote for Obama (they went to the polling place 5 times to make sure they had the right place) and being shocked that a black man will not just be serving in the Oval Office but actually sitting behind the desk. Obama of course calls on Cecil to meet him and I bet the producers and Oprah hoped like hell to get him in the movie to play himself.
I was actually waiting for Obama to pop up like he seems to do all the time but I guess since he wasn't campaigning anymore he didn't find it appropriate. Or maybe Michelle just hates Oprah too much to have her husband be in her movie.
In any case I would have liked to see a meeting between Cecil and Obama as a nice bookend to the movie. You would start it with two black guys getting lynched and then you end it with two black guys shaking hands, one of which, is the most powerful man on the planet. I guess that would have been one of the few times I actually wanted to see Obama outside of the political arena.
Verdict: Watch it on Netflix but maybe see the actual history of the Civil Rights era on a documentary first.
