Lee Daniels’ The Butler

As history, The Butler’s parade of famous moments and figures is superficial to the point of trivialization, reducing years of turmoil to glib sound bites. But in its square, melodramatic way, the movie has a serious point to make: Like Tanya Hamilton’s much-superior Night Catches Us, it argues that change often comes about through multiple channels—some revolutionary, others less so. (The film unnecessarily hammers home this idea by having no less than Martin Luther King Jr., played by Nelsan Ellis, inform Oyelowo that his father has played a quietly important role in history.) Chronicling six decades, the movie captures changing attitudes toward protest. While the contrast between scenes of family life and major events can be mortifyingly on-the-nose (“I don’t care about what goes on in that house,” Oprah Winfrey, as Whitaker’s wife, snaps after the Kennedy assassination. “I care about what goes on in this house!”), cringeworthy passages alternate with powerful interludes, as when the son’s sit-in at a segregated lunch counter is crosscut with Whitaker helping to set the table at the White House.

By having Nicole Kidman void herself on Zac Efron in The Paperboy, Daniels opened himself to a lot of bad jokes, but The Butler is a vastly more conventional and watchable film, worth taking on its own terms. As a director, Daniels remains maddeningly erratic; like Precious, The Butler has a tendency to undermine its material with caricature, and the presidential casting here is a particular embarrassment. Who wouldn’t think of Robin Williams as Eisenhower, John Cusack as Nixon, or Alan Rickman as Reagan? (Ford and Carter are passed over in a montage; maybe De Niro wasn’t available.) And just because LBJ (Liev Schreiber) was known for intimidating aides by inviting them to watch him defecate doesn’t mean his constipated nattering meshes with this film’s tone. Clearly, there’s something of The Paperboy’s bathroom obsession in The Butler. But mostly, the movie is a straightforward soap opera—sentimental, reductive, and, in spite of itself, satisfying.