Why 'The Butler' wasn't snubbed by the Oscars

I have now seen three Lee Daniels movies to date. The first, Precious, was in my estimation, brilliant, the second, The Paperboy, was barely watchable.

His biggest box office hit, the civil rights-themed drama The Butler, falls somewhere in the middle.

It's a simplistic, safe and sanitized movie and yet I'm glad it was a success because for a certain segment of the populace this is a story that needs to be told. Still, this film had no business being in the Oscar conversation.

It has some nice moments and some decent character work but the truly great films usually benefit from a little thing called subtlety of which, unfortunately, this film has none.

Race needs to be handled in shades of grey because its such a complex issue and fact of life but this film chooses to portray everyone as a type -- every president is a Cliff Notes version of themselves (we literally get a scene of LBJ giving orders from the toilet), the Whitaker and Winfrey characters are two-dimensional and the character of the butler's son (played by David Oyelowo) only seems to exist to inform the audience about the history of the civil rights movement.

I want to be clear though, I didn't hate this movie. I'm just disappointed in it. I feel as though in an attempt to win the embrace of mainstream audiences Daniels abandoned all the daring he showed with Precious.

Oprah Winfrey and Forest Whitaker

I also feel his decision to stock his film with recognizable stars in almost every role works against the movie. For every celebrity cameo that works is another that is just painfully distracting (John Cusack could never be a convincing Richard Nixon no matter how hard he tried).

What could have been a very compelling tale of a man forced to witness history from the sidelines almost plays like a more serious Forrest Gump, where Whitaker's lead character happens to be present for every momentous incident of the last 60 years. I don't like seeing the Black Panthers being reduced to a caricature -- or the white characters for that matter.

I do like that the film attempts pay homage to the contribution of black service workers. I hated the attacks (primarily from my fellow African-Americans) on The Help and now this film, because they dramatized this essential part of our history. But this movie lacks The Help's film's emotional impact.

In a year that delivered powerful nuanced portrayals of race relations (in 12 Years a Slave and Fruitvale Station), The Butler feels a little dated and quaint for me. I'll take it over a Tyler Perry production any day of the week but my early hesitation to see it in theaters was validated when I finally viewed the film tonight.

It's all surface level and good intentions. It looks great and it's message is unassailably noble but in 2014 I need something more. I need something better.