Held back for a year since its 2011 Toronto unveiling, this red state-of-mind comedy from Brit director Jim Field Smith and first-time writer Jason A. Micallef is cynically timed to take advantage of election season. Any real-world comparisons between the Sarah Palin-like Laura Pickler (Jennifer Garner) and her African-American opponent, Destiny (Yara Shahidi), are encouraged in this over-churned movie that presents itself as a "cutthroat story of greed, blackmail, sex, and butter." But the adversaries aren't engaged in a muckraking presidential race. No, they're slinging the fatty portion of milk that's usually reserved for cooking, using it to sculpt oily yellow masterpieces in Iowa's annual Mastery in Butter Competition. The hope-filled yes-we-candidate is 11 years old, not too young for her to realize a political truth: "White people are weirdos." Still, despite an appealing cast of oddballs (Rob Corddry, Kristen Schaal), the satire spreads pretty thin.
