"The Butler"

[LA Ute]

Richard Epstein thinks "The film's retelling of history comes at a real social cost." I'll still watch it but I am disappointed it doesn't tell the story accurately.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/154366

[LA Ute]

Saw the movie last night. Contrary to my fear in my earlier post, I really don't think it matters that the story of Cecil Gaines (played wonderfully by Forrest Whitaker, a great and gifted actor, IMO) is highly fictionalized. The real man was named Eugene Allen, who served as a butler in the White House during the Administrations of eight Presidents, from Truman to Reagan, and in the very beginning it's made clear that the movie is only "inspired by" Allen's story.

There are funny moments and poignant moments, and the relationship between Cecil, the father, and his son Louis is fascinating. Cecil is more old-school about change and civil rights, and Louis is in the Civil Rights Movement up to his eyeballs. The movie kind of feels like Zelig or Forrest Gump, because the two men are present for just about every major historical event from that era. That part of the movie is gimmicky. But it does have heart.

David Denby in the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2013/08/26/130826crci_cinema_denby) calls the movie "a lightweight, didactic movie, a kind of well-produced high-school entertainment." I think that's a bit harsh, but the movie really is pretty didactic. Political liberals will love the portrayals of Kennedy and Johnson (heroic) and of Nixon (cartoonishly reptilian) and Reagan (nice man with noble instincts, but too rigidly conservative on the movie's key issue). The writer clearly has an unabashedly liberal perspective. The last 30 minutes or so are like watching an Obama for America commercial.

In short, it was an OK movie but I wish I had seen "Blue Jasmine" instead and watched this on Netflix. But we hit traffic and got to the theater too late for the movie we really wanted to see.