8/10. Here's why:

I don’t think THE BUTLER should be assigned homework. It’s written in a way that the viewer already has to know about the historical events shown, so it’s better to watch other movies first. It will also help viewers to compare and they’ll realize that this is a well-directed crowd-pleaser but not a masterpiece. People have complained about the stunt casting of the presidents. Well, they were long cameos, so it’s not like any of them had the opportunity to ruin the movie (or to make it better). I usually defend movies accused of creating white guilt. A lot of them don’t actually do it. They show racism in a way that’s objective and relevant to the plot. I can’t say the same of this movie. I mean, there’s a speech that’s like “Americans judge other countries. They judge the concentration camps. But we had concentration camps here 200 years ago.” That speech wasn’t objective nor relevant to the plot. It was just designed to make viewers feel bad. Even though they shouldn’t, because they didn’t do anything; it was their ancestors. Because of the premise, I knew the makers would rush through the presidential terms and I was fine with that. There have already been other movies and shows about these presidents, so there was no need to go deep into that. But they also do that with CECIL GAINES (the title character)’s personal life. This is more obvious when GLORIA dies. Two minutes later, script writer Danny Strong has moved on to the next thing. And her affair was pointless. Also --and this isn’t a flaw because it’s minor--, there are some moments of her complaining about CECIL never taking her to the White House. When he finally takes her, we don’t see him asking her to go. That's more dissapointing than when a butler... Ummm... I don't know how they can dissapoint; I've never had one.