The entire plot for Butter is the kind of wackadoodle delight that one should really experience with fresh eyes and their feet up on a couch with a bowl junk food at their disposal.

| Apr 11, 2019

A wicked Midwest satire with razor blades stashed beneath its bright candy-apple surface.

| Oct 5, 2012

Hardly the high-priced spread, this condescending comedy about Middle America will score with some audiences and put off others.

| Oct 5, 2012

Butter contains enough genuine levity to slide down easily.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 5, 2012

Plays like one long, slow descent into cloying moralizing and uplift that's well past its expiration date.

| Oct 5, 2012

We're still just scratching the surface of witty, provocative humor as long as envelope-pushing directors such as Jim Field Smith continue to find work.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 5, 2012

At times, the Midwestern satire "Butter" is almost funny, and in its honor I almost laughed.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 5, 2012

Director Jim Field Smith keeps the quirky characters coming with smooth efficiency and throws in some nice touches along the way.

| Original Score: B | Oct 5, 2012

At 90 minutes it feels inflated, and though clearly intended as funny, it's difficult to locate, except in the most general terms, the focus of the movie's satire, and there's not a laugh to be had.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 4, 2012

Given the talent assembled for this diversion, you can't believe it's not better.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 4, 2012

The film grows increasingly mirthful as the characters come into focus, and the casting is the key: Ms. Garner, who also helped produce the film, has a gift for catty roles ...

| Oct 4, 2012

Butter thrives on skewering characters whose self-importance isolates them completely from the consequences of their actions.

| Oct 4, 2012

Drippy sentiment and coarse political satire vie for control of "Butter," a two-faced sendup of heartland obsession that wants to have its toast and eat it too.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Oct 4, 2012

Butter is a film more enamored of its premise than interested in making it work.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 4, 2012

"Butter" is funny in spots, but it's so preoccupied with landing below-the-belt cultural jabs that it misses the opportunity for laying out biting social commentary.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 4, 2012

Butter wishes it were a Christopher Guest sendup but comes off like a cheap imitation.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 4, 2012

A shrill, cartoonish mess - not a total disaster, but no one's idea of a good movie.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 4, 2012

It's one thing to create biting social satire; it's quite another to shoot at such easy targets.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 4, 2012

It's the film's unwillingness to deal with the sometimes hilarious and often problematic things its characters say and do that stands as one of its ultimate failings.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 4, 2012

A toothless, insufferably smug satire using competitive butter-carving as a weak-tea stand-in for Midwestern politics ...

| Original Score: D+ | Oct 4, 2012