Lee Daniels' The Butler

"Lee Daniels' The Butler" starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey.  This movie tells the story of White House butler Cecil Gaines (Whitaker).  Gaines served 8 Presidents over 3 decades.  I'm a bit ambivalent towards this movie, there was some good and some bad to it.  The good?  I loved the insiders perspective of some of the biggest issues of our times, from the civil rights movement, to Viet Nam, to the assassinations of JFK and MLK and I like the way the movie showed the toll that these events took not only on Gaines but also on society as a whole.  The performances by Forrest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey were top notch, I also thought that Cuba Gooding Jr and David Oyelowo gave strong performances.  On the bad side?  It wasn't the fastest moving movie, it really dragged at times.  I'm also not sure that Gaines himself is all that remarkable of an individual, don't get me wrong he was great at what he did, and he overcame a lot to make something of himself and I do realize that that in itself is a nice feat, especially given where he came from, but the fact is, he never really did anything all that remarkable, he played no part in the shaping of any of the administrations that he served in, a 2+ hour movie on his life didn't make for the greatest entertainment in my book.  Still, overall, a good movie, certainly worth seeing, you may want to wait for the DVD though.

I will give it 3 out of 5 stars (*****).