The big surprise of the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, for me, is undoubtedly Jim Field Smith’s Butter, a hilarious political satire using a butter sculpting competition in Iowa to poke fun at 2008’s political race between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. There is room to find parallels to all facets of politics over recent years in Jason Micallef’s debut screenplay pitting a young black orphan up against a cold-hearted and determined housewife and you shouldn’t need to watch CNN on a daily basis to realize whom the two are meant to represent.
Jennifer Garner’s voice over prepares us for what is to come in the film’s opening moments saying this is a story of “greed, black mail, sex and butter.” However, this film presents the strangest way of devising a political satire I can think of as we’re introduced to the little-known world of butter carving through Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell) and his ambitious wife Laura (Garner).
Bob is a successful butter carver, winning at the Iowa State Fair several years running with such winning sculptures as scenes from Schindler’s List, the Passion of the Christ featuring Neil Diamond and most recently, The Last Supper. He’s known as “the Elvis of butter” but he feels it’s finally time to step down and let a new king be crowned. This, however, doesn’t sit well with his wife who has found joy in the spotlight and refuses to let the Pickler name no longer be represented in the world of butter carving. So, she decides to enter this year’s competition herself, but she’s not alone.
Laura’s main competition comes in the form of the aptly named Destiny (Yara Shahidi), a ten-year-old African American orphan that has been passed around from one weird white family to the next and she’s resigned to believe “white people are crazy.” But now she seems to have finally found a happy home with the Emmets (Alicia Silverstone and Rob Corddry). When asked what she’s good at she tells them “nothing,” but it’s soon revealed she has a talent for the arts and a joy for butter sculpting and thus she enters the competition opposite Laura Pickler and the dual is on.
Other characters that enter the fray include a bike-riding stripper named “Tokyo Rose” played to perfection by Olivia Wilde, a rootin’ tootin’ car salesman named Boyd Bolton played by Hugh Jackman and the Pickler’s daughter Kaitlen played by Ashley Greene. I really wish I could tell you more, but that would only ruin the surprise. The metaphors each character represents had me rolling, even during the film’s quieter moments, as I searched for meaning in even the slightest gestures.
Butter is an effective examination of how silly politics have become in our country. It holds nothing back, everyone is game and it’s all the better for it. The hard part is figuring out how many people paid close enough attention to the 2008 election to get the majority of the jokes here. I also think people will confuse this as being a commentary on the Republican party as Garner does come off a little like Sarah Palin early on and dresses a lot like Michelle Bachman throughout. That confusion may ultimately confuse the film’s ultimate outcome, but hopefully anyone that’s read this will be prepared.
Butter has a lot of laughs for anyone that enjoys a healthy dose of political satire. There may be some enjoyment for people that don’t choose to look beneath the surface, but I’m not sure the laughs will be consistent for anyone that isn’t paying attention to the political parallels, which should likely prove to make this a tough sell to general audiences.
