Movie Review: Butter

 

Michael's Movie Grade: F

A bottom of the barrel social commentary movie.

This film discusses such serious issues as teen suicide, online bullying and judging others on the way they look. With this in mind it hard to say that this movie is not well intentioned. However, the intentions are about the only thing good in this movie. The film feels forced and false from the very start, and there is never one moment that feels real. A definitely major factor is the dialogue. No character speaks in anyway like a real person does. Nearly all of the dialogue wavers from trying too hard to sound like how the kids talk to sounding like every character is delivering a sermon to being too obviously expository. This problem is multiplied by the fact that the story is told mostly through dialogue. There is even narration from our main character which flat out directly tells us what the movie does not take time to actually show us. If you simply left this narration out, there would be many times when you simply would have idea what is going on in our main character's head. Instead of enhancing the emotion, this narration is providing it, which is never a good sign for any movie. Not that any of the emotions make sense in this movie. In fact, the way so many characters react seems completely farfetched and unbelievable. For the life of me I can't understand what is going through any of these characters' minds. None of their reactions to our main character saying that he is going to commit suicide, make any sense. The characters think he is cool now and start hanging out with him and befriending him, but still keep pushing the idea of his suicide. None of the characters who care about him ever try to actually comfort him or get him the help he obviously needs. They just simply talk about it as if it is the coolest thing in the world that he plans to kill himself. Maybe if these characters were terrible people that were making fun of him or if they knew him well before hand and therefore had come to a conclusion through knowing him that he wouldn't do such a thing this could make sense, but they paid no attention to him before hand and they are shown to truly care about him. Unfortunately, much of this movie is spent with comical hijinks that result because he plans to commit suicide. Two of his new friends even start a bucket list of silly things for him to do (while wearing a bucket on his head, of course) before he kills himself. Instead of disturbing or sad this is meant to provide some light-hearted comedy. It doesn't even have any edge to it so we could call it dark comedy, instead we are simply supposed to look at this and say, "isn't that silly and quirky." Because of this rather than funny, these scenes simply come off as tasteless and meanspirited. To say they left a bad taste in my mouth is an understatement. Unfortunately, much of the film is full of "hijinks" like these and they are all just as tasteless. Meanwhile none of the characters ever feel real or have much of any personality. In fact, some of the characters seem to completely change their personality from scene to scene (this is especially true of the main character's crush). 

Simply avoid at all costs.

Note: If anyone reading this is considering suicide, please call National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 1-800-273-8255. God put you on this Earth for a reason and there is never any shame in seeking out help.