Lee Daniels' The Butler Reviews

Lee Daniels' The Butler is the type of film that will likely please viewers who feel that they're doing their civic duty by learning about history and experiencing the trauma of the civil rights movement.

Full Review | Original Score: C+

At times maudlin and at other times just smug, dabbed with just enough humour to keep from being insufferable, it's like a victory lap that serves to dull and distress the hard-earned footsteps that came before it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Lee Daniels' The Butler is part lackluster biopic, part ham-fisted (and somewhat misguided) historical allegory - despite noble intentions of the cast and filmmakers.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

The movie's a mess, but a unique and provocative one.

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The film is, in the conventional and lamentable 21st-century Hollywood mode, so overt and obvious that at times it feels like a parody of historical drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 83/100

Squeezing a miniseries' worth of drama into a feature-length film, this impassioned story simply doesn't have the time to really delve into the epochal periods it chronicles.

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A great film about the American civil rights movement is way overdue. The Butler, overwhelmed by flash and good intentions, doesn't even come close.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

What The Butler tries to accomplish is so noble and ambitious that it almost doesn't matter how clumsily maudlin it ends up being, how over-earnest and sanctimonious it can be.

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A well-meaning, but overly long history lesson that largely finds its captivating hook whenever the attention is focused off its title character.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10

Feels like a 12-year-old's C- oral presentation on the subject.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4

An unimpressive survey of American racism told through an under-whelming drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

If Forest Whitaker wasn't in this film, it would have been a misfire.

Full Review | Original Score: C+

"The Butler" is a nice idea for a movie, but has a mostly silly script and some of the craziest and most laughable casting imaginable.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

"Lee Daniels' The Butler" might have been titled "Lee Daniels' Forrest Gump" - its hero challenged morally rather than mentally, but watching history in Gumpian fashion, as a series of cameos viewed through a slightly clueless daze.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

It's too obviously a careful tour through American history, and while some sequences work - particularly the various attacks on civil-rights workers - too much of it feels as flat and cheap as a film strip.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Strong work from the three stars as a family splintered by Civil Rights-era tensions, but the film too often resorts to easy sentiment and simple caricatures.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Instead of rolling out historical content like a mighty stream, it only trickles weakly

Full Review | Original Score: C

Despite admirable work from Whitaker and Winfrey, Lee Daniels' The Butler is nearly crushed by its own symbolic weight and its contrivance of a central character arc from keeping one's head down to learning to stand up.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

The film's compulsively watchable vibe proves to be short lived...

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

If only it could have been Spike Lee's The Butler

Full Review | Original Score: 2