...I found it about as exciting as watching paint dry. The story is so uninspired that I wonder what the director was trying to say. That white people are almost all bad? That there is fulfilment in simply serving and acting like a piece of furniture while overhearing momentous things while pretending not to?
I find now, helped immensely by this movie, that I'm getting awfully tired of Forest Whittaker and his trademark lazy eye. According to this movie, dumb luck in stumbling across a series of kind benefactors allows a man to achieve a pretty high calling for an unschooled southern boy, and Whittaker ends up carrying serving trays for a series of laughably portrayed presidents for the next four decades. (unfortunately they ignored the Carter administration and they could have had Ron Howard or maybe Chuck Norris appear as the peanut farmer cum President) For that matter, the way the casting choices for presidents went they should have kept going and got Steve Martin as Bill Clinton (with a cameo by Roseanne Barr as Monica Lewinski) James Cromwell as Bush Sr., Pee Wee Herman as Bush Jr., and Will Smith for Obama. In the end though, nothing happens. The Butler has a son who joins the Black Panthers, another who joins the Army (all fabrications) and a wife we hear has a drinking problem and then we hear she doesn't anymore. (!) And you look at the clock and see that there's still forty minutes of run time left and the paint hasn't dried yet.
I find now, helped immensely by this movie, that I'm getting awfully tired of Forest Whittaker and his trademark lazy eye. According to this movie, dumb luck in stumbling across a series of kind benefactors allows a man to achieve a pretty high calling for an unschooled southern boy, and Whittaker ends up carrying serving trays for a series of laughably portrayed presidents for the next four decades. (unfortunately they ignored the Carter administration and they could have had Ron Howard or maybe Chuck Norris appear as the peanut farmer cum President) For that matter, the way the casting choices for presidents went they should have kept going and got Steve Martin as Bill Clinton (with a cameo by Roseanne Barr as Monica Lewinski) James Cromwell as Bush Sr., Pee Wee Herman as Bush Jr., and Will Smith for Obama. In the end though, nothing happens. The Butler has a son who joins the Black Panthers, another who joins the Army (all fabrications) and a wife we hear has a drinking problem and then we hear she doesn't anymore. (!) And you look at the clock and see that there's still forty minutes of run time left and the paint hasn't dried yet.