While most people see butter as a cooking ingredient, the citizens of a small town in Iowa see it as a way of life. For the past 15 years, local artist Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell) has won the annual butter sculpting competition and has become somewhat of a local legend in the community. This year is different as the board members want Bob move aside for a new butter artist to rise up. Unfortunately, Bob’s wife Laura (Jennifer Garner) isn’t too thrilled with the idea so she enters the competition herself in order to keep the trophy in the family. Throw in an adorable and talented little girl and a stripper out for revenge and you have Butter.
As you can imagine, the competition for a butter sculpture competition in Iowa isn’t that heavy. There’s Destiny (Yara Shahidi), a young orphan who has moved from family to family who happens to have a gifted talent at sculpting butter. Then there’s Brooke (Olivia Wilde) aka Tokyo Rose, a stripper having an affair with Bob who only enters the competition to take the Pickler family down a peg or two. That and get the money that she’s owed from them. Both Shahidi and Wilde are the redeeming stars of the film that keep it from completely falling apart.
Destiny’s overall cuteness factor and simply adorable story about how she moves from family to family is clearly enough to win over audiences. Shahidi simply delivers a performance audiences can’t help but fall in love with. Meanwhile, Brooke is a loose cannon who does what she wants and doesn’t care what others think. Wilde keeps things interesting and even manages to corrupt the Pickler’s daughter, Kaitlin (Ashley Greene). Unfortunately, the entire film can’t be carried on the backs of these two.
Butter simply doesn’t have enough laughs to make it memorable. Most of the humor is too obscure and falls flat right after the delivery, leading to plenty of awkward half-smiles from audiences. The concept revolving around a butter sculpting competition is good but I wish there was something more to it. Instead, we’re left with a shallow comedy that has a few standout performances but not much else.
Links
[1] http://shakefire.com/tags/butter
[2] http://shakefire.com/tags/jennifer-garner
[3] http://shakefire.com/tags/ty-burrell
[4] http://shakefire.com/tags/olivia-wilde
[5] http://shakefire.com/tags/rob-corddry
[6] http://shakefire.com/tags/ashley-greene
[7] http://shakefire.com/tags/alicia-silverstone
[8] http://shakefire.com/tags/hugh-jackman
[9] http://shakefire.com/tags/jim-field-smith