THE BUTLER

THE BUTLER is a pretty hackneyed, emotionally manipulative, conservative examination of US race relations in the twentieth century.  Told through the eyes of a fictionalised version of real White House butler, the movie shows us the attempts by presidents from Eisenhower to Reagan to address the race issue, and the conflicting attitude of African Americans toward this struggle.  The butler, Cecil Gaines, after a harrowing childhood experience of extreme prejudice and lawlessness of a 1920s cotton firm in the South, decides to use a strategy of smiling compliance in the search for safety. He will numbly hear anything, and be subservient to anyone, to keep his family safe in the relative middle class affluence of Washington DC.  By contrast, his son Louis is affronted by this subservience, and first joins the peaceful protests led by Martin Luther King, before briefly flirting with the violent activism of the Black Panthers, and ending with direct political engagement.  

The problem with the film is that this political dialogue between father and son - between safe servility and dangerous activism - is so heavy handed and starkly drawn that it threatens to overpower what is actually the far more interesting aspect of the story - the character drama that sees a convincing marriage shown over fifty years. What gives this film emotional heft is not the fact that after years of prejudice, the Butler finally gets to meet President Obama, but that his wife is not there by his side, after decades of struggle, overcoming alcoholism and genuine love. That's the reason why I cried a little at the end of the movie - because that's the part of this film that has emotional honesty and authenticity.

As for the politics, it's fairly simplistic in its opposition between father and son.  The only nuance is delivered by the Martin Luther King character who makes a slight (and rather unconvincingly continued) case for the idea that the butler figure is not subservient but subversive. As for the depiction of the various presidents, this is fatally undermined by stunt casting and few of the famous actors chosen manage to transcend that "ooh look it's Robin Williams as Eisenhower" novelty to approach authenticity.  I suspect the only one who really manages is Alan Rickman as Reagan - but he also has the most nuanced character insofar as he seems to have the most genuine connection to Gaines but also the most offensive race policies.  The movie also plays a bit like history as "one damn thing after another".  We spool through presidents, each with their allotted five minutes, until it becomes more of a fashion parade than anything else.  One senses a rather cheap need to depict famous fashion moments with Nancy Reagan and the scene showing Jackie Kennedy in her famous blood-stained pink suit struck me as very exploitative indeed.  The stunt casting of Mariah Carey as Cecil Gaines mother also fatally undermines what should be a very tragic character.

So in all this - the stunt casting - the simply drawn politics - what is there to like in this film? A strong performance by David Oyewolo as Louis Gaines - the son who embodies the civil rights struggle. And most of all a magisterial performance from Oprah Winfrey as Cecil's wife who moves from blowsy drunk to noble loving wife.  It makes you wonder about the performances we have missed because of her talk show day job.  As for Forest Whitaker, a fine actor, I feel that he isn't given a wide range here - his character essentially being stalwart in his views and reactions until a small epiphany near the end of the film. He serves, if anything, as the counterpoint to Winfrey's Oscar-worthy performance, but that's merely the result of the script. 

THE BUTLER is on release in the USA, Canada, the Philippines, Portugal, France, Denmark, Iceland, Israel, Germany, Kuwait, Indonesia, Spain, Sweden, Singapore, Finland, Australia, Brazil, Lebanon, the UK, Ireland and Mexico. It opens in Hungary on November 21st, in Romania on November 29th, in Belgium on December 4th, in the Netherlands on December 5th, in Norway on December 25th, in Poland on December 26th, in Chile and Greece on January 30th and in Japan on February 15th. 

London Film Fest Day 10 - PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE

PRECIOUS is a tremendously funny, moving film that has won Audience Awards and critical acclaim on the festival circuit. As the ungainly title says, it's based on a novel by an American author who had worked with young girls in the projects. The resulting protagonist, Clarice "Precious" Johnson, is a compendium of the troubles they experience. She is obese and illiterate, the mother of two children before she is 17, both the result of paternal rape. Her mother is obese, foul-mouthed and verbally and physically abuses the child she perceives to have stolen her man. Precious begins to rehabilitate after being kicked out of school and into the Each One Teach One programme. An heroic teacher gets her literacy and confidence up and she finds friends for the first time. But even then, author Sapphire loads more onto her, as she realises that her father made her HIV positive.

The technical choices in this film are superb. Lee Daniels preserves the stream of consciousness from the original novel, including the way Precious forces herself into a fantasy world to escape abuse. Horrific acts are shown to us, but when you think about it, we're shown less than we imagine through these brief flashbacks, especially concerning marital rape. But what really sets this movie apart are the performances. Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe gives a great performance as Precious - able to play both the downtrodden teen and the confident, sexy girl of her fantasy life. Paula Patton (DEJA VU) is empathetic as her teacher. But the real surprises come from the celebrity cast. Lenny Kravitz gives a fine modulated performance as "Nurse John". Mariah Carey is astoundingly good as social worker Mrs Weiss. But most of all, someone needs to give Mo'nique as Oscar for her performance as Precious' mother. She plays a hideous monster for most of the film - appallingly abusive. But in a final confrontation with Mrs Weiss and Precious, Mo'nique gives depth, layers, and even vulnerability to that character that brought me to tears.

PRECIOUS played Sundance, Cannes and Toronto 2009. It will be released in the US on November 6th, in the Netherlands on November 12th, in Finland on January 22nd, in Sweden on January 29th, in Australia and New Zealand in February and in France on March 10th.

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN - do you find the idea of Adam Sandler catching a fish in his butt-crack funny?

Do you like to see one-joke movies based on two-dimensional SNL characters?

Can you live without a plot so long as you see lots of comedy shagging?

If so, YOU DONT MESS WITH THE ZOHAN is the film for you.

In all seriousness, I almost admire Adam Sandler for the balls-out energy he throws at the screen and his chutzpah in making a gross-out comedy based on the Middle-Eastern conflict. OK - all those humus jokes fall flat, and I really don't find Sandler's character schtupping old age pensioners funny, but you can't deny that this movie means well. It tries so hard to make you laugh, I almost felt bad that I didn't like it more. But I really didn't like it. I hated the Zohan character - a deadly Mossad agent who just wants to be a hairdresser, love his Palestinian girlfriend, and live in peace. I've seen Sandler do the 80s hairdo schtick too many times before, and the accent just rips on Borat. There's nothing intrinsic in Zohan's predicament that requires that he shag older women - Sandler just sticks that in to pad out forty minutes before he can fall in love and protect the neighbourhood from a property developer. Weak. Very weak. And just because it's better than LITTLE NICKY doesn't mean it's good.

Whatever happened to the Adam Sandler who did PUNCH DRUNK LOVE?

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN is on release in Canada, Iceland, Mexico, the US, Australia, Israel, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Hungary, Panama, Estonia, Romania, Poland, Indonesia, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Germany, Austria, Brazil, Turkey and the UK. It opens this weekend in Belgium, Croatia, Colombia, Denmark, Finland and Spain. It opens on August 28th in France, Slovakia and Venezuela. The movie opens in Argentina and Norway on September 19th and in Italy on October 3rd. It is released on Region 1 DVD on October 10th.

BEAUTY SHOP - warm-hearted, mildy amusing rom-com

BEAUTY SHOP features a bunch of actors of considerable talent, charisma and charm, not least Queen Latifah, Alicia Silverstone, Kevin Bacon, Andie MacDowell, Mena Suvari and Djimon Hounsou. That this warm-hearted romantic comedy manages to entertain at all is entirely down to their performances. Because everything else about this film is cliched and/or ham-fisted. I put this down to the fact that the production team, as talented as they might be, have little experience of cinema behind them. The director has a background in music video, the writers have done some TV and, ominously, the suck-fest that was Mariah Carey's GLITTER. As a result we get a truly derivative and predictable movie with some blunt attempts at handling racial politics thrown in. The story is that Queen Latifah is a marvellous hair dresser who works for a pretentious (literally) salon-owner played by Kevin Bacon. One day, she decides to leave and open a Beauty Shop in her local neighbourhood. She takes with her a white hairstylist played by Alicia Silverstone. It's the kind of film wherein when it transpires that a hunky but sensitive handyman turns out to live above the Beauty Shop, we KNOW that he and Latifah will get together. Similarly, when the other black stylists give Alicia Silverstone's character a hard time at first, thanks to the magic of cinema, all will be harmony and love by the end. Perhaps I am being too hard on this movie. If it leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling then isn't the genre-contract fulfilled? But I don't know. There is something deeply frustrating in seeing Queen Latifah et al pump out this unimaginative cinematic fare.

BEAUTY SHOP opened in the US in March and opens in the UK today. It hits France on September 28th 2005.