Butter (2012)

This movie is set in Iowa and the central part of the story is based on an Iowa State Fair tradition, so while it gets most of the facts wrong, I couldn't watch it and not write a review of it.  It just wouldn't be right.  The movie is about an Iowa State Fair tradition of carving butter--which sounds both odd and unattractive, but in person it is really strangely cool to see, and amazingly, the movie really does convery that (all of the butter carving that is depicted is spectacular).  There is always a cow, constructed on a chicken wire frame, that is a marvel to see.  Butter turns out to be a nice medium to sculpt in--and readily available in a farming state like Iowa.  The things about the movie that are irritating from the stand point of an Iowan are that the Johnson County fairgrounds are absolutely wrong--way too big and completely unlike what our community looks like. What is entirely accurate is that there is pretty much everything you can think of that is fried and on a stick--including, rather improbably--butter.

I think there is an interesting thing to think about that runs through this movie --it is to what extent do we nurture and value children in our society.  The competition is between a rather unlikable woman, Laura Pickler (played nicely by Jennifer Gardner), and a nine year old child named Destiny.  Destiny has been in and out of foster care, abandoned by one family after another, but she is finally in a house that genuinely appears to want her.  She discovers that she has an artistic side, and that sculpting butter comes naturally to her.  Laura has absolutely no mercy in her pursuit of winning the state prize--she stoops to cheating and lying in order to try to beat Destiny.  Barely a grown up in the crowd says anything about this ruthless approach to the competition--we really need to value and nurture our children if we want to succeed in the future.