BEFORE: I could have followed the path with Margo Martindale out of "Table 19", and I will get there, but I'm going to follow the Andrew Daly path instead, he carries over and plays a radio announcer in this film. Suddenly I have a bad feeling that this film is going to be a lot like "Pitch Perfect", where the proceedings are ruined by an unnecessary sports-type announcer, when that isn't even a thing that exists at a cappella competitions, or butter-sculpting competitions, I'm betting.
THE PLOT: In Iowa, an adopted girl discovers her talent for butter carving and finds herself pitted against an ambitious local woman in their town's annual contest.
AFTER: It's even worse than I feared, unfortunately. Let me say that I've never been to a butter-sculpting competition, I don't know exactly how they work, like how the judging takes place or what exactly the rules are, or anything like that. But here's something I feel confident in saying - whoever wrote and directed this film has never been to one either, and also has no fundamental idea how they work. How do I know this?
Well, I've been to a state fair - last year we went to the Texas State Fair in Dallas, and there was a butter sculpture there, featuring four famous faces from Texas history, in a sort of Mount Rushmore arrangement. But what was in the sculpture's not important, here's the important part - it was already made and on display, it was NOT made during the fair, because these things take time to make. So if there were a competition to judge the best sculptures, it already took place before. OR there was no judging, and the scuplture was merely there as a showcase.
Meanwhile, this film can't decide if the competition depicted is taking place on the county, or state level - because those are two very different things. We first see a butter sculpture of the Last Supper, displayed at the Iowa STATE Fair. So assuming it won a competition to be displayed, that competition would be at the STATE level, and would (theoretically) feature the winners from each county, being judged against each other - that would make sense. But this film uses a contrivance to give us two butter-sculpting competitions with the same rivals, one at the county level and then a rematch at the State Fair. (This is an obvious short-cut to set up a rivalry between the same competitors, without waiting for a year of screen time to pass.) But then, where are the winning sculptures from the other counties? Noticeably absent. Surely if sculpting butter is a thing, and that thing is popular in Iowa, there must be a number of county-level competitions, and the winners would progress to another competition at the state level. Right?
Nope, this is apparently a state-wide popular phenomenon that, for some reason, only two people can be technically good at at the same time, which makes no sense. It seems that if you win the Johnson County competition, that's somehow exactly the same as winning the Iowa-wide competition. In my mind, that would only get your sculpture displayed at the COUNTY fair, not the STATE fair.
And then for some other reason, the guy who's won this competition for the last 15 years is asked to not enter any more, which seems both arbitrary and unfair. If he's talented, then he deserves to keep winning, and if someone else is better, then all the judges have to do is vote for that other person, so WHY is he being told not to enter any more? And why is his wife so determined to follow in his footsteps, even though she's never carved butter herself before? What gives her the feeling that she is not only capable, but somehow deserves to win? Is she that non-aware and delusional, or just extremely self-centered?
A little research on Wikipedia brings me a little closer to an answer - this is intended as political satire, believe it or not. Think about it - Iowa, that's where the U.S. has one of the first Presidential primaries every four years. This whole thing, believe it or not, is a loose take on the 2008 Democratic primary, like the Iowa caucus or something. That means "Destiny", the young black girl with the natural talent for sculpting butter, is a stand-in for Obama. (Making him a young boy named "Hope" would have been too on-the-nose, apparently.) And the pretentious, stuck-up woman who's overconfident about her talent and chance of victory symbolizes Hillary Clinton. Her husband, the previous champion, is prevented from entering the contest again, which symbolizes the term limits we have on the President (which is technically 10 years, not two terms, look it up). And he gets in trouble for having sex with a stripper, which really drives home the Bill Clinton connection.
So, you see, this isn't really about a butter scuplting competition at all, which is unfortunate. But then again, at least someone didn't try to make a Christopher Guest mockumentary-style movie about people carving butter, because that possibly could have been even worse. Eh, who knows, maybe Bob Balaban and Ed Begley Jr. carving sculptures made by Parker Posey and Michael McKean could have been a fun film, but I guess we'll never know. Anyway you slice it, in real life or in the film, it's still an enormous waste of dairy products. I guess they just can't build sand castles in the Midwest, but that still doesn't mean this alternative art form makes any sense.
Buried under all the nonsense is a sweet story about a little girl being bounced around from one foster home to another, looking for a place to fit in and something to be good at - there's your damn movie, it's a shame that all this other stuff had to happen, and the storyline just couldn't get out of its own way.
Also starring Jennifer Garner (last seen in "Danny Collins"), Ty Burrell (last heard in "Finding Dory"), Olivia Wilde (last seen in "People Like Us"), Rob Corddry (last seen in "What Happens in Vegas"), Alicia Silverstone (last seen in "Clueless"), Ashley Greene (last seen in "CBGB"), Yara Shahidi, Hugh Jackman (last seen in "Pan"), Kristen Schaal (last heard in "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2"), Phyllis Smith (last heard in "Inside Out"), Corena Chase, Brett Hill, Garrett Schenck, Judy Leavell, Pruitt Taylor Vince (last seen in "Nobody's Fool").
RATING: 4 out of 10 racist ninjas
No comments:
Post a Comment