"Butter" - Film Review

There are movies that strive to be something special, and then there are those films content to pick the path of least resistance. They aren’t ambitious, they’re not doing anything innovative or creatively striking, and they’re often pretty cliché. Butter is one such film.

Butter isn’t a bad movie, but it always fails to go one step past the sentimentality and satire. It’s a funny movie carried by some strong performers, but its satire feels like it’s never specific enough and never goes far enough to earn how unnecessarily mean and smug it occasionally is towards some of its topics and its characters. The sentimentality also largely comes off as being tacked on in a very forced way (there's a black foster child who can't help but be nice towards others).

The film never chooses to settle on where its ire is meant to be aimed at. It’s a very broad attack on conservative culture. But in spite of this, some of its jokes are so over the top that they have an amusing absurdity to them and some are well-delivered enough that they overcome their shortcomings. Though in the end it's all too surface level.

Structurally the film is uneven. The film starts off with voiced-over back stories for two different characters with such disparate backgrounds that initially the film awkwardly handles jumping from one story to the next. After these introductions the film can’t seem to settle on what it wants to happen, burning through several potential stories before sticking to one.

The motivations for many characters aren’t worth bothering to question (the angsty teen daughter is treated like an afterthought). Most tend to do things simply because the plot demands it of them, which would be fine if the film didn’t have a concept that were pretty much a one-off gag. 

The film is set in the cultural landscape of butter sculpturing, a subculture with enough weirdly specific details to fuel the satire at first. But soon the satire fades and muddles away for a predictable, uninteresting winner takes all competition between a clear protagonist and antagonist. 

The film is not without its charms. Its cast is really strong and they have a lot of fun in their different roles, even the bit ones. But the film is largely so light (you might even say light as butter) that it's mostly forgettable.

Grade: C+