Butter (2012)
Average Rating: 4.6/10
Reviews Counted: 60
Fresh: 21 | Rotten: 39
Despite its talented cast and a few funny moments, Butter's satirical aims are largely undone by a lack of subtlety and air of smugness.
Average Rating: 4.1/10
Critic Reviews: 23
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 17
Despite its talented cast and a few funny moments, Butter's satirical aims are largely undone by a lack of subtlety and air of smugness.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 7,492
My Rating
Movie Info
Butter follows an ambitious woman (Jennifer Garner) who is married to Iowa's reigning butter sculpting champ (Ty Burrell) but decides to enter the race on her own when he retires. She's the shoo-in until an adopted young black girl (Yara Shahidi) discovers she has an uncanny talent for butter-carving and becomes a late-breaking favorite. -- (C) Weinstein
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Cast
-
Jennifer Garner
Laura, Laura Pickler -
Olivia Wilde
Brooke -
Ashley Greene
Kaitlen, Kaitlen Pickle... -
Hugh Jackman
Boyd Bolton -
Alicia Silverstone
Jill, Julie Emmet -
Ty Burrell
Bob Pickler -
Yara Shahidi
Destiny -
Rob Corddry
Ethan, Ethan Emmet -
Kristen Schaal
Carol-Ann, Carol-Ann St... -
Phyllis Smith
Nancy -
Garrett Schenk
Orval Flanagan -
Andrew Daly
Announcer -
Judy Leavell
Helen Flanagan -
Joe Chrest
Butter Fan -
Deanna Ricks
Butter Fan's Wife -
Kelly Tippens
Mrs. Moore -
Dodie Brown
June Carmichael -
Jeanne Evans
Mrs. Gunderson -
Cindy Creekmore
Danielle Mattingly -
Christine Scheller
Transitional Home Assis... -
Brett Hill
Hayden -
Corena Chase
Miss Schram -
Mark Oliver
Martina Caswell -
Pruitt Taylor Vince
Ned Eaton
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All Critics (60) | Top Critics (23) | Fresh (21) | Rotten (39) | DVD (1)
A wicked Midwest satire with razor blades stashed beneath its bright candy-apple surface.
Top CriticHardly the high-priced spread, this condescending comedy about Middle America will score with some audiences and put off others.
Plays like one long, slow descent into cloying moralizing and uplift that's well past its expiration date.
The movie's entire superior attitude is kind of annoying.
We're still just scratching the surface of witty, provocative humor as long as envelope-pushing directors such as Jim Field Smith continue to find work.
At times, the Midwestern satire "Butter" is almost funny, and in its honor I almost laughed.
Butter is a dizzying blend of smug satire, surface-level observations and mean-spirited swipes at flyover types. Oh, and take away Olivia Wilde and it's a laugh-free affair.
A movie concerned with the seemingly ridiculous world of butter carving may not sound like a smart, tear-jerking, must-watch political satire. Yet Jim Field Smith's sophomore effort Butter is all of the above and more.
As smart, savvy, and witty as the film is at times, it never escapes the inherent identity crisis in its makeup
Undeniably strange yet sassy, it spreads subversive, thinly-sliced Americana.
A heartland-set train wreck of purported satire that is confusingly edited throughout, and full of false moments which betray a lack of rigorous conceptual thought and honesty.
The film's skewering of Middle America is so soft, you could easily cut it with -- what else? -- a butter knife.
It settles for cute when it could have had more bite, and it aims for amusing when it had hilarious in its sights.
Like its namesake, this small-town ensemble comedy is somewhat oily and lacking in flavor.
Another in a long line of bad films set in the Midwest.
(D)espite its slights, Butter finds a way to win us over.
Butter contains enough genuine levity to slide down easily.
Quirky comedy pushes boundaries in the name of laughs.
Garner's Laura is a lazy caricature, a Sarah Palin-style Republican trophy wife in power suit and pearls, but then every character in rookie writer Jim Micallef's script is a flat stereotype.
With Sarah Palin, the movie's thinly disguised object of derision, now operating on the fringe of mainstream culture, the entire film feels like yesterday's news.
The film ping-pongs jarringly between Laura and Destiny's stories, both of which are strikingly different in terms of their tone.
Audience Reviews for Butter
Super Reviewer
Good decent movie! Butter is a delightful little comedy that has most of its best jokes in the trailer but still manages to make you smile throughout. I'll admit, when I watched this I didn't have particularly high hopes. The film's strength is its short run-time. At a little over 80 minutes, the film opens up quick, makes you chuckle and sometimes laugh, and wraps up before you worry about its problems. It is necessary for me to address these problems but I honestly didn't care much for them. I had a lot of fun watching it.
In Iowa, laid-back Bob has won the state fair's butter-carving contest 15 years running; his tightly-wound and hard-charging wife Laura sees Bob becoming governor, so when the contest organizers ask him to step aside so others can win, she's incensed; when Bob won't protest, she decides to enter herself. In the county contest, she's up against Destiny, an African-American foster child, and Brooke, a prostitute Bob hasn't paid. When things don't go Laura's way, she enlists the help of Boyd, an old boyfriend. Laura's step-daughter and Destiny's foster parents are in the mix as things heat up at the state fair. What are Destiny and Laura's destiny?
Super Reviewer
-
- Ethan: You could die of a tragic butter overdose. There could be a rabid grizzly bear hiding inside this very moose lodge waiting to tear your face off.
- Destiny: There could be a python inside.
- Ethan: What if this place is full of monkeys with a deadly virus?
- Destiny: It could be the ghost of Hitler.
- Ethan: What if there's no gravity in there and you float up and bang your head on the ceiling? And then all the sudden gravity kicks in and you bang your head on the floor.
-
- Destiny: My new foster parents and everyone at my new school were so nice, that I couldn't help but think, are these crackers for real?
-
- Brooke: Hey, I know you're only like 10 and shit, but listen up. You beat that skanky ass bitch. You beat her hard. I've done all I can do. It's up to you know.
-
- Ethan Emmet: It's butter. You put it on toast!
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- Brooke: I get pregnant like once a month!
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