Before I jump into “Butter” I want to apologize for our time off. We’ve all been busy in preparation for the holiday season here at CPT and our blog has gone neglected. However, we have been putting more effort into the forum and we’re happy to see our numbers are growing. If you aren’t a member, I encourage you to join the forum and partake in discussions surrounding TV, movies, and anything else you can think of.
Butter sparked my interest once I learned that it’s all about the butter carving exhibits at the Iowa State Fair. Last year I attended the fair for the first time ever and I even got to see the legendary butter cow for myself. I was curious to see how a movie could be about such a simple sculpture. Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell) has been Iowa’s reigning butter carving champion for the past 15 years. After finishing this year’s sculpture, a life sized replica of The Last Supper made entirely of butter, Bob is asked to hang up his butter knife and let a new artist rise to the challenge. Laura Pickler (Jennifer Garner) does not take her husband’s retirement lightly and after threatening the head of the butter committee she decides to enter the butter carving contest herself.
Laura assumes she can win the butter carving competition easily, but that is before she meets her competitors. 10 year old Destiny (Yara Shahidi) is living with her new foster family (Rob Corddry and Alicia Silverstone) when she decides she wants to take her natural butter carving talents to the competition.
The last competitor to enter the contest is Brooke (Olivia Wilde). Brooke has no business being in the competition other than she is seeking revenge on the Pickler family.Brooke is a stripper and is seeking $600 from Bob for what he owes her for “favors”.
The well rounded cast is finished off by Ashley Greene playing Bob’s daughter and Hugh Jackman as Laura’s old high school crush.
Being from Iowa it was easy to be drawn to this film and even easier to pick out all the inaccuracies. A big flaw in the film is that there is no butter carving contest in Iowa. The butter cow and butter carvings are real and draw huge crowds at the Iowa State Fair, but there is no contest to determine whose sculpture will be on display at the fair. Another issue with the movie is the way people from Iowa are perceived. The character of Laura is often seen wearing 1950’s style clothing complete with arm length white gloves and a big pearl necklace. The movie makes people from the Midwest seem like uneducated backwards hicks, which (most) of us aren’t.
The movie did have a few good laughs, but many of the jokes didn’t land right because I’m from the Midwest and could see through them. At the end of the movie I felt like the amazing cast was wasted on a subpar movie. Butter had potential to be something more, but it was just spread too thin.
