DVD Review: Spinning Into Butter

Sarah Jessica Parker using the N-word is the big surprise in 2005’s Spinning Into Butter, a dour, heavy-handed drama about racial prejudice based on Rebecca Gilman’s 1999 play. Deliberately drab-looking Parker plays a college professor whose urban teaching experience has left her with a fear and loathing of black people. Transferring to a fashionable college in lily-white Vermont, she comes to grips with her prejudice after a black student becomes the victim of a hate crime. Miranda Richardson, Beau Bridges and James Rebhorn play Parker’s fellow deans, and Mykelti Williamson delivers a good turn as a Chicago reporter. Though well-intentioned, the film talks itself to death with ponderous, politically correct pleas for tolerance and racial reconciliation.

Shelf Talk: Screen Media’s key selling points note Parker’s popularity and the success of Sex and the City on screens both small and large. Extensive advertising and publicity is promised in such diverse venues as Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, Variety, USA Today, The New York Times and various online and radio outlets.