Film review: The Butler is a personal tale of African-American triumph

The Butler is a story of an African-American employee in the White House that becomes an inspiring parable about the struggle of blacks, now that an African-American family lives there.

The butler in question is Eugene Allen (renamed Cecil Gaines for the film), who served eight presidents. Born on a Georgia cotton farm in 1919, he witnesses a racist man abusing his mother and killing his father.

Shortly afterwards, the plantation's matron (Vanessa Redgrave) takes pity on him and moves the young boy indoors, teaching him the finer ways of domestic servitude.

As he grows up, this training leads him to work in big city hotels and, eventually, the Oval Office. The setting offers an amusing but distracting array of presidential cameos, starting with Robin Williams as Dwight Eisenhower, followed by John Cusack as a shifty Richard Nixon, James Marsden as a bland John F. Kennedy, Liev Schreiber as Lyndon Johnson, and, most amusingly, Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda as Ronald and Nancy Reagan.