I had heard many good things about the movie BUTTER before I
had the chance to see it. Critics were treating it fairly nice and word of
mouth via numerous magazines said good things as well. So I went in expecting
something quite different than what I got.
The world of BUTTER revolves around the annual Butter
Carving Championship held at the Iowa State Fair. For the past 15 years the
winner has remained Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell). Ty is a good natured man who has
done an amazing job with his sculpting, his last being a full sized replica of
the last supper. Bob is married to Laura (Jennifer Garner), a prim, proper and
respectable leader in their community who feels that Bob's 15 years of winning
may lead them to greater things like being the Governor or perhaps even one day
the President. Not only is Laura a respectable member of the community, she is
one that is feared as well. No one will mess with Laura or what she wants.
When the championship committee makes the decision to ask
Bob to step down and let someone else win for once, Laura goes on a rampage.
She views it as the world trying to take down her and her family, never once
thinking that perhaps it would be encouraging for others to be involved. When
Bob refuses to enter, Laura does what she considers the next best thing and
enters herself in the hopes of retaining the family legacy.
But this won't be the easy win she expects. A storyline
running alongside the Pickler family is that of Destiny (Yara Shahidi). A young
black girl in an orphanage passed from one foster family to another, Destiny
has landed with a new couple, Ethan and Julie (Rob Corrdry and Alicia
Silverstone). When Destiny happens across Bob and his sculpture at an
exhibition she is amazed and picks up on carving butter herself. A natural at
it, she decides she wants to enter the competition as well.
Also entering the competition is Brooke (Olivia Wilde), a
stripper that Bob had a fling with and who he owes $600. In an attempt to make
his life worse than it already is, Brooke continues to show up at Bob's house
demanding her money and finally enters the competition just to spite Laura.
So far this sounds like a decent satire of the whole
competition scenario that we've had before in films. Instead we get something a
little different that actually turns out to be a bit more hateful than one
would expect. I mean granted when it comes to movies made about the Midwest
people will always be portrayed as closed minded and redneck, the whole
clinging to their guns and Bibles sort. For some reason Hollywood finds a lot
of humor in that. While they continue to laugh uproariously at those sorts of
things I find that it's more of an easy out and lazy comedy than anything.
This is not to say the film fails completely. At the start
it truly has some funny moments. It's well made and does feature some really
good performances. But then somewhere along the way it veers off and decides to
get nasty and mean instead of funny. Laura goes from being an obsessed
housewife with delusions of grandeur to what Hollywood thinks of right wingers.
She's spouts off profanities when the mood suits her, feels she is entitled to
a place of power and prestige, displays racists tendencies and will do any and
everything she can to retain the family title. Her character becomes hateful
and manipulative. Anyone that opposes her, including a stripper, is offered up
as just and righteous.
The movie changes along with the character of Laura Pickler.
It changes from a movie that has some great humor in it to one that seems more
determined to ridicule those the writer doesn't agree with instead. In those
attempts to ridicule we see displayed some of the laziest writing around
resorting to stereotypes better left to online memes rather than a feature
film.
One odd thing about those in Hollywood. Anyone who has
actually lived in the Midwest always talks about how much they loved their
childhood, yet they always seem to find it necessary to insult or ridicule
where they came from. And for those who have never visited let alone lived in
the Midwest, they always feel they know exactly what it's like to live there.
Unfortunately with rare exceptions, they almost never get it right. This holds
true in BUTTER.
A great example appears in outtakes that roll during the
final credits. Ethan and Destiny have a scene where they're sitting in his car
and she tells him she's afraid of going in to enter the competition. He begins
to tell her that there are worse things that could happen than just entering.
Things like piranhas learning to walk and entering the building at the same
time to attack. These are things he says to break down her fear and give her
the courage to enter. It's a nice scene and in the movie plays well. But in the
outtakes one of the scenarios that Destiny offers up is "It could be
worse; it could be a Republican fund raiser". Gee, isn't that a subtle
display of where the thoughts of this writer lay.
The potential for a great movie was there. Instead it
resorted to the cheap laughs it had that are actually not funny unless you hate
Republicans. If so, you will love this movie. If you're a bit more open minded
and think there are good and bad people on both sides of the coin, then this
movie will offer a few laughs and then toss them all aside to gain political
points with Hollywood.
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