It’s not so much that Lee
Daniels’ The Butler is a bad movie, but that it’s completely toothless.
Here’s a movie made by a black filmmaker whose audacious breakout was Precious, a film that doesn’t dare shy
away from the hard circumstances of being black in America, specifically of
being black and desperately poor in America. The brunt of the problem with the
story is in Danny Strong’s screenplay, which drew on a Washington Post article
about a black man who worked in the White House as a butler through eight
Presidential administrations for inspiration. Still, Daniels chose the material
to direct. And I’m not insisting that a black filmmaker must be consigned to
telling black stories or that when he does, they always have to be gritty, but
it seems to me there is some moral imperative to battle and to make audiences
feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately, The
Butler is so intent on being a moneymaker for the studio that it
compromises pretty much all of its values so it can appealing to a mass
audience.
