The Butler – Directed by Lee Daniels

Here’s a movie that definitely has it’s shirt on – a tuxedo in fact and wears it’s heart on it’s sleeve/ It’s the very earnestly told story of  Eugene Allen – a Black Butler in the White House who worked for 34 years under 8 presidents.

In the film version of this true story Forest Whitaker plays Cecil Gaines – based on Allen, and his wife is played by Oprah Winfrey.

The casting is absolutely phenomenal .

Giles Hardie wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald that m,any of this years biopics sucked because they didn’t have a story arc – this one has two – the fight for civil rights in the US and the struggle within a family t about how to achieve those rights.

And the premise – that as a child who saw his father killed on the cotton plantation through the tumultuous 20^th century fight for civil rights all the way to Barack Obama becoming elected, this is an incredible breadth of a lifetime to attempt to commit to one 2 hour film.

I wanted to LOVE the movie – I did really like it, but there is a convenience and clunkiness in the executuion of this incredible story that at times jolted me out of the world they had created.

It is definitely a must see, but it’s also a very American story of politics and policies and most of all segregation which is something most of us have only seen in the movies – but to see the sheer ugliness of it and the different ways subsequent generations tried to change the status quo is utterely fascinating.

3 & 1/2.