I will start as explaining, as opposed to many other people commenting this movie : I'm a young French woman so unrelated to American history and I watched this movie as a foreign person. I DO NOT GET ALL THE HATE ABOUT IT! First of all it is a movie, and for me very typically American! Do not take me wrong but a lot of American movies especially when it's about history love to make it more dramatic, more Manichean, that is what makes American movies entertaining! This time it's an African American perspective and that is why it disturbs most of the viewers! When I read all the critics, it's so ridiculous: "not all blacks were slaves, not all whites were slaves owners, black panthers were also violent, etc." Yeah duh! Don't you think we know that??? It's not the point of the movie, the purpose of the movie was to oppose the life of a black servant (actually sorry but for decades Blacks were mostly employed as servants) and some of the MOST memorable episodes or persons of the black history in the US (slavery, segregation, civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. etc.) at no point it was against whites! It's part of the violence of history, of our worldwide history, but yes we know, thank you very much, that everything could be more complicated in real life than in a movie! Actually I was pleased to see that there was whites participating in the civil rights movement in this film, also the Black Panthers were definitely portrayed as violent, as the KKK (again duh!) then at the end, there was this Obama part, some will see it as propaganda, which to me is also dumb. Of course a black butler working in the White House for decades would be just excited to see a black president!! even we as french people were amazed so can you imagine what it would be like for him?? The thing that I did not like was maybe the fast changes with administrations at the white house again it was to follow the African American history evolution, but..I also did not like JFK and his wife : not believable! But to sum up : entertaining and moving! definitely not boring...
Review of The Butler
