REVIEW: Butter

4/10 - I guess Butter carving sounds interesting. But it isn't. 

Butter is a great movie on paper. It's got a great cast, likely due to the great script. In fact, the script is so good it won a bunch of awards as a spec. On paper, it sounds like a fantastically funny, heartwarming, complex story.

As a movie it's pretty meh all around.

It's not politicial enough to be a biting satire. It's not funny enough to be a comedy. It doesn't follow through with it's attempts to be smart. This is a film overflowing with potential that falls flat on it's face.

As much as I love Jennifer Garner, and think she's actually quite funny in the role, it's the wrong casting. Her character is a larger than life scheming southern belle, who's hunger for power has corrupted all morals. Jen's southern accent wafts in and out, and is just too unlikable.

Somehow that's representative of all that goes wrong with this movie. The choices made in the production of this movie weren't necessarily wrong, but they weren't big and bold enough. Everything feels a little wishy washy. I have a suspicion that a lot of the smaller story lines were neutered to make room for the main story.

For example, Olivia Wilde's character Brook is a stripper. She seduces the home grown and wholesome Bob Pickler in a moment of weakness. Then she stalks him for the rest of the movie, demanding her money. In order to extort the money, Brook joins the butter carving competition. As interesting of a monkey wrench as she is, her character just collapses upon itself by the second half of the movie. Her paper thin character has no where to go so she disappears.

At best, Brook is intended to be a foil for Laura. Brook comes from nothing, and is able to make the moral choice in the end with every reason not to. Laura is privileged, and makes awful decisions. But it's a totally ineffective comparison because they have no business being in the same movie together. Their story lines don't ever meet or impact each other in any significant way.

What's frustrating is that the setup is there for so many great potential story lines, but practically all of them dwindle away into nothing. Without any follow through the movie is nothing but a drag.


There are some great moments that I can appreciate as a writer. When the signups are happening for the butter carving competition, there is a long rope maze of an entrance way. As each character enters the room to sign up, they tackle the rope maze a different way. It's a subtle detail, and I find it delicious to reveal character that way. Unfortunately the one thing that scene doesn't do is make me laugh.

Butter is a good movie if you want to see what goes wrong in a script from page to screen. It's not enough to rely on selling points like big characters and an unusual setting. Without a worthwhile story, and maybe even more importantly, without jokes this movie is a big miss.


IMDb - Butter (6,3)
Wikipedia - Butter 
Rotten Tomatoes - Butter (33%)
Amazon.ca - Butter

Sarah Does Survivor!

Cross Promotion time! Sarah Does Survivor is my examination of every Survivor season in chronological order. Check it out if you like exhaustive essays on 14 year old tv shows!

Check it out here:
Sarah Does Survivor

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It was controversial, it was a hot trend, it was event television. The premier of Survivor wasn't tentatively met with hot anticipation and eager criticism. Magazine covers referred to CBS's summer lineup of Survivor and Big Brother (also premiering in the summer of 2000) as "Voyeur TV" the term "Reality" television used with equal shock value. (.... Read the full article here)

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REVIEW: The Monuments Men

4/10  - Like Ocean's Eleven during WW2! I bet no one has made that joke yet...

George Clooney can pitch one hell of a movie. When George is explaining how great this movie is going to be, everyone listens. Hell, based on the trailer I was sold. Unfortunately he's a better seller then closer. This movie sucks. Big time.

It's difficult to pin down exactly the failure of a film like The Monuments Men. Technically the direction is beautiful. The cast is pretty solid all around, maybe not idea for the roles in my opinion, but memorable characters nonetheless. It's hard to fault the writing when it's based on a true story, and it's quite an uplifting unbelievable story. But you know what? I'm going to blame the writing, sorry Georgie.

The script is lacking any suspense, and frankly any direction. The narrative is so filled with self worth and nostalgia that it looses the audience halfway through. It's as if the pride of telling this particular story is supposed to make it an inherently better story. I actually think this story would be great if told by the right person. The threat of Nazi soldiers bearing down should be paramount. But it's not just you their after, the value of the cultural heritage that they would also destroy. It's a story with mountains of potential.

What really happens in The Monuments Men is quite dull. There are two obvious plots that are laid out like train tracks at the beginning. There are some illustrious men recruited for this covert mission. The reputation of these men lies solely in your ability to recognize them as actors and attribute them a reputation you feel is worthwhile. Then the value of the art is somehow minimized as well. One particular statue is given personal emotional value, which I suppose should raise the stakes for all the art, but that doesn't really happen. Converse to the intention of giving the art more meaning it seems to actually lose meaning as the story progresses. The movie's ultimate downfall is it's lack of opposition. This is clearly a worthwhile mission, and the enemy in this case seems to be apathy. No one wants to help these guys save the art. There might be a war going on that's keeping them occupied, but who knows really, they're a bunch of jerks for not helping. Some Nazi's sort of get in their way, but it's all a big shrug. They show up and get it done.

One of my favorite films in recent history is Argo, another loose adaptation of factual events. Like in The Monuments Men it's quite obvious how the ending will turn out if you've paid attention to history at all. Argo manages to make the audience compelled to the great characters through giving them high stakes and great motivations. Another film that might compare is Ocean's Eleven which also plays a fast and loose game with the audience of high stakes for a big payout. The failing of The Monuments Men lies entirely in it's inability to raise the stakes. Had this been a nail biter at the end, many other flaws could have been forgiven. This movie is like getting halfway through Oceans and watching Danny Ocean lay out the plan to film the vault ahead of time and steal the money pretending to be the SWAT team. There would be no reason to watch the ending. No suspense. No intrigue.

This has been a bit of a hot-topic lately but I'm also way over the all white male cast thing. Along with The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Monuments Men is a film with a notably large cast, meant to be a ensemble. When you lineup an ensemble cast and it's all the same race, gender, and age range, that's disappointing. I'm sure the argument for historical accuracy could be made, but let's be honest. The Cate Blanchett character is a throwaway meant to represent nothing but a female prize who needs to be saved. It's all just a little too safe and easy. Is it really that scary to change the point of view everyone once in a while? The movie, like the cast, is just too bland.


IMDb - The Monuments Men (6.1)
Wikipedia - The Monuments Men
Rotten Tomatoes - The Monuments Men (32%)
Amazon.ca - The Monuments Men