Post by StevePulaski on Sept 10, 2012 11:36:48 GMT -5
The cast of Butter.
Rating: ★★★
Butter sculpting is one of the many things I wish I could do but can not. I don't have the time, the patience, the eye, or the craft to pull off something as skillful as molding pounds and pounds of butter into an object or a replica of an event. Such a talent will require devotion and commitment, and certainly a helluva lot of free time.
Jim Field Smith's Butter is a bleeding gums satire on suburbia and follows the lives of those white people who seem to have it all but will never recognize it. We take a look at a Conservative Midwestern town in Iowa, where its residents are just as quirky their interests. Our first main character is Laura Pickler (Jennifer Garner), wife of professional butter-sculpture Bob Picker (Ty Burrell), who has decided that after fifteen years he will retire and live a more quiet, controlled life. This upsets Laura, who decides to continue Bob's legacy by pursuing the butter-sculpting championship (whether or not one actually exists baffles me, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me). It is, at first, unknown to Laura that Bob has been unfaithful, and has agreed to pay a local stripper a plethora of money to afford her rent. The stripper is the hilarious Brooke, played by Olivia Wilde, who steals every scene she is in. She will join the championship, as well, knowing she will get under Laura's skin and show her that Bob and her were meant for each other.
Laura has competition, mainly with a young black orphan named Destiny (Yara Shahidi), who has traveled from house to house, finally finding a family with Rob Corddry and Alicia Silverstone. After claiming to them that she isn't skilled at anything, she becomes an overnight sensation in the town for being able to mold anything carefully out of butter. The other competitor is the dim-witted, yet good-natured Carol-Ann Stevenson (Kristen Shaal), a fan of Bob's who becomes convinced that she can win the next title, although she is victim to her own ineptitude.
Butter plays just like Alexander Payne's film Election did, with its heavily satirized look at suburban culture, and also providing us with a character that has redeemable and despicable qualities. In Election, Reese Witherspoon plays Tracy Flick, a cocky brown nose who pesters her classmates and her teacher, played by Matthew Broderick, in an attempt to win a school election. She loves to believe that everyone likes her, but Broderick's character has it out for her the entire time, even setting up a dense football player to run against her so she won't run unopposed. Payne used wry humor and hilariously over-the-top performance to make Election a winning film. Smith employs virtually the same techniques, but in a little subtler of a manner. We laugh at the character's bizarre personalities, how they react towards each other, and the way they treat this preposterous competition more so than their actual reactions and monologues. Either way, it's a favorable combination.
Butter is a film I believe could work equally as a documentary as it does a quirky satire. Seeing the obscure in films has always been a favorite of mine, I believe that butter sculpting, or clay, soap, or ice sculpting could've made for an enticing documentary, as long as the passion and heart was there. It would also hopefully answer a question that was looming in my head since I began watching the film; after all is said and done, and the competition has been judged, critiqued, and the winner awarded, what happens to the sculpture itself? Surely electric bills for the cooling containers wouldn't be paid contently.
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Ty Burrell, Olivia Wilde, Rob Corddry, Ashley Greene, Alicia Silverstone, and Hugh Jackman. Directed by: Jim Field Smith.