Loosely based on the story of Eugene Allen, an African American who served eight presidents, this movie serves as an American history lesson and an insightful look at what it's been like to be Black in America.
In the movie, Eugene becomes Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker) son of a sharecropper, who joins the White House staff during the Truman administration and remained there through the Regan years. The audience is treated to inside glimpses of each president and his family, as well as the personal life of the man who learned to adopt two faces: one he presented to the White world, the other for those of his race.
The Butler is a riveting movie of a man working at the heart of social change forced to carry on as if all remained the same. At the end of the film, when this sharecropper's son returns to the White House after Obama's victory, there didn't seem to be a dry eye in the theater.
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