Criticwire has a picture of the early reviews for Lee Daniels The Butler. It sounds as though it's getting better reviews than his last picture The Paperboy.
I've been following Lee Daniels' career since I watched Precious and had a distinct feeling that the emperor had no clothes. Precious was praised to high heavens but it was critic-proofed by being a "realistic" depiction of extreme poverty in the ghetto. Because it dealt with incest, rape, AIDS, babies with Downs Syndrome, the welfare system, emotional and sexual and physical abuse, obesity and dark-skin/light-skin rivalry, white critics threw up their hands and said, "It must be good."
In fact, it was high camp, which I realized the moment a frying pan (frying pan!) flew in from offscreen and struck the protagonist in the head. Precious is a suffering-woman film, like Stella Dallas and the genre's best tribute, Polyester. As my friend Jon said, "Depravity is the new corny."
The Paperboy was an unqualified failure; reviews routinely took pains to list the outrageous elements of the film and then stress that the film is actually quite boring despite those elements. So it was a surprise to me to see that Daniels got in-title billing for this film.
It makes some sense, though. It looks as though this film is almost as critic-proof as Precious by way of Social Importance. I'll keep an eye out; it just may be over-the-top enough to be worth a watch.
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