Butter (2011)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio & Animation Deleted Scenes-Deleted Scenes (8:59) Outtakes-Gag Reel (5:02)
Rating
Year Of Production	2011
Running Time	86:49
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (71:07)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Jim Field Smith
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Hugh Jackman Olivia Wilde Ashley Greene Jennifer Garner Rob Corddry Alicia Silverstone Ty Burrell
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$29.95	Music	Mateo Messina

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Unknown	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Descriptive Audio Dolby Digital 2.0 (256Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English	Smoking	Yes, When Brooke enters the Butter Contest!
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, Various outtakes and goofs

     The tagline for Butter says it all: "A comedy about sex, power and spreading the wealth. There's going to be a meltdown."

     Bob and Laura Pickler (Ty Burrell, i.e. Phil in Modern Family and Jennifer Garner) are known as the royal family of butter carving at the Iowa State Fair. Bob is the state champion Butter Sculptor for the last 15 years running, having honed his skills as a young boy. With his latest masterpiece, a life-size recreation of Leonardo da Vinci's painting, The Last Supper, Bob is sure to win for a 16th time. However, he is asked to step down from the competition to give someone else a go. Bob goes along with this plan, seeing it as an opportunity to 'give back' of himself, but his wife Laura has other plans, not willing to forego her family's shot at greater ambitions, such as state governorship.

     Laura enters the butter sculpting contest herself and soon she faces stiff competition from three very diverse competitors; Carol-Ann Stevenson (Kristen Schaal), a fan of Bob, with no talent, Brooke (Olivia Wilde - apparently her favourite film role to date according to IMDb), a local stripper who's owed $600 by Bob for a sexual encounter in his car and finally ten-year-old Destiny (Yara Shahidi), a foster child who's discovered a gift for butter carving when she attempts to add finishing touches to Bob's Last Supper masterpiece. Destiny's latest parents, Ethan and Julie Emmet (Rob Corddry and Alicia Silverstone), encourage her to further her talent, which becomes a challenging notion when Laura begins to go to outlandish lengths to ensure she wins first prize.

     These people are serious about their butter-sculpting ambitions, yet in real-life their lives are a shambles. Bob is having an affair with Brooke and Laura is trying to get her ex-boyfriend Boyd Bolton (Hugh Jackman) to testify that Ethan paid him to help Destiny win the initial contest. The only redeemable character in the middle of all this is Destiny, who shows herself to be more adult than the adults.

     Jennifer Garner makes Reece Witherspoon's Tracy Enid Flick seem 'normal' in Election. She will go to any length to get what she wants, and I mean any length. The lady is obviously insane and oblivious to reality or the consequences of her behaviour on others. In other words, a real sociopath.

     This is a dark comedy that should make you turn away when the main characters start to become unhinged; rather, another part of you wants to see just how crazy these people can get, because this is how Butter has established a cult following among fans. The critics may have written this off, but since 2011 Butter has become a slow 'churner'.

Video

     The original aspect ratio of Butter is 2:35:1. The DVD presentation mirrors the Blu-ray in that it is cropped for this release.

     The aspect ratio is 1:78:1, 16x9 enhanced for widescreen televisions.

     Apart from the incorrect aspect ratio, Butter looks fine for DVD, with an average bitrate of 6.46 m/b per sec.

     The colour is sometimes saturated, perhaps for comedic effect, but otherwise the cinematography can be best described as natural-looking.

     There's some slight film grain throughout and intentional noise in some scenes, possibly included for artistic reasons.

     Subtitles are available in English.

     The RSDL change occurs at 71:07 but is not noticeable as it occurs at the end of a scene which fades-to-black.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     This is a dialogue-driven film, with most of it mixed for the centre channel.

     The main audio track is an English Dolby Digital 5.1 track encoded at 448 kbps. There is also an English Descriptive Audio track encoded at 256 kbps.

     Some dialogue is not clear at times as it was peculiarly mixed a little lower than the surrounding ambient noise.

     Olivia Wilde's character has a raunchy theme that introduces her to most scenes she is in, but other than that there's not much to this musical score that stands out.

     Surround channel usage is mainly limited to the front channels, there is very little action in the rear speakers.

     The subwoofer is only used for the musical elements of the soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Main Menu Audio & Animation

     The main menu plays with scenes and music.

Deleted Scenes (8:59)

     Six deleted & extended scenes, ironically presented in the original aspect ratio of 2:35:1, include small changes to scenes from the final cut, except for the fence graffiti scene which helps explain Ethan and Jill's resolve to help Destiny.

Gag Reel (5:02)

     Corddry and Burrell are quite funny here, but there's nothing too much different from what is shown in the closing credits.

    The Region 1 United States release is identical to the Region 4 Australian DVD, except for the addition of Spanish subtitles on the US release and the addition of the Descriptive Audio track on the Australian release. Having said this, the United States DVD does include the film in its original aspect ratio.

     Butter is a dark comedy which is an exploration of how crazy people can get to achieve their goals. Personally, I didn't find it as poor as the critical consensus it received, and I can understand the fan following this has built since its release theatrically in 2011. The cropping of the video transfer for the local Australian release warrants no justification however. It's a shame that this film can't be viewed in its correct specification in Region 4, either on DVD or Blu-ray.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall