BUTTER – The Blu Review

The Movie

Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell) has been butter sculpting champion of his small Iowa town for 15 years running. But when he’s pressured into stepping down from the latest county fair in order to give others a chance to compete, his ambitious, ultra-competitive wife Laura (Jennifer Garner) decides to take his place and go for the blue ribbon herself. Her fiercest competition comes from Destiny (Yara Shahidi), a 10-year-old black girl recently taken in by new foster parents (Rob Corddry and Alicia Silverstone), who turns out to be a prodigy at buttercraft. With the fair looming, a crass stripper (Olivia Wilde) hounding Bob for money, and tensions running high, Laura finds that she’ll do pretty much anything to win.

The Review

This is a very strange movie, and that’s not because it’s about butter carving. It’s has the tone of a satire, except it isn’t actually satirizing anything. It might be trying to make fun of small towns, or interpersonal politics, or even the 2008 election (what with Garner doing some kind of strange semi-impersonation of Sarah Palin). But Butter has nothing to say about any of those subjects, and thus is a mostly hollow exercise. Even worse is that it half-asses its stab at mockery, as it also tries to be sentimental at many points. The movie tries to have its cake and eat it, but doesn’t even get to the point of baking the cake.

It’s a shame that, in the process, it wastes such a great cast. Burrell is essentially Phil Dunphy redux, and he very quickly runs out of things to do in the story. Wilde is saddled with a character who does literally nothing that makes sense, although she’s almost fun enough to redeem it. Garner is just plain awkward, playing a caricature whose meant to be found alternately repellent and sympathetic at the most arbitrary times. Shahidi pulls a overly-cutesy “kid who acts like an adult” routine, although a few moments between her and Corddry contain most of the genuine emotion that the movie manages to muster. Ashley Greene and Hugh Jackman are also in the movie, although they might as well not be. Greene is part of a strange, going-nowhere story tangent, while Jackman delivers an awful midwestern accent and serves as a hollow plot instigator.

Despite clocking in at an hour and a half, Butter still feels too long. It’s a mess of unthought motivations and mostly unfunny gags. When a movie tries to be cruel, it should make sure that its characters deserve it, and it shouldn’t decide to suddenly stop being cruel halfway through. One of the better jokes involves Wilde’s character submitting a big block of butter with an “A” drawn on it in lipstick as an entry to the competition. She’s making an uninformed literary reference, and the film itself displays that level of lazy cluelessness in trying to be something more.

The Specs

The Blu-Ray edition also comes packaged with the DVD version of the film.

Video Resolution: 1080p
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Running Time: 91 minutes + extras
Audio: English – 5.1 Surround / Stereo
Subtitles: English, Spanish

The Extras

• Six deleted scenes, none of which are terribly impressive.
• A gag reel, which is airlessly fun.

Butter will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD December 4th.