Bob the Butler(2005)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

Over time, Bob (Tom Green) finds himself growing close with Tess (Genevieve Buechner), Bates (Benjamin Smith), and especially Anne (Brooke Shields), putting his job as their butler on increasingly shakier ground. One day, after Bates fails to make his school’s basketball team despite getting help from Bob, he privately blames Bob for getting his hopes up for nothing and decides to get revenge on him by sneaking into his room while he is asleep and taking his pet hamster Rascal out of his cage, then setting him loose in Anne’s bedroom and freaking her out. Having been forbidden to keep any pets, Anne orders Bob to remove Rascal from her home and disinfect the whole house. The next morning, Bob figures out that Bates was the one who let Rascal out and confronts him about it, and after Bates yells that he promised him that he would make the team, Bob corrects him by telling him that he only promised to help him. He also assures Bates that, one day, he will find something that he is good at. Bates then approaches Anne and confesses that he had set Rascal loose in her bedroom, then hugs her as a form of apology, pleasantly surprising her because neither he nor Tess hug her all that much. After Anne leaves for work, Bob calls up his butler school teacher, Mr. Butler (Simon Callow), and invites him over to the house, and after giving him Rascal for safekeeping, they – along with Bates – start cleaning the whole place.

While this goes on, we see Tess hanging out with Morgan (Nicole Potvin) and Alex (Britt McKillip) – two popular girls at her school – at a clothing store, and they give her a few items to shoplift as a form of “initiation” into their clique. Predictably, she gets busted, and Morgan and Alex ditch her and run off. She is taken to the police station and put in a cell, and one of the detectives, Alvarez (Jerry Wasserman), calls her house. Bob takes the call, and after Alvarez tells him that Tess is at the station, he goes down there and picks her up, and he promises her that he won’t tell Anne about what happened to her. She apologizes to him, both for how she has treated him and also for trying to get him fired earlier in the film by suggesting that he put together a luau for her mother (Anne was no fan of it, and the pig he cooked wound up exploding), and then she hugs him. However, while Bob is away, Bates clearly shows Mr. Butler that the butler profession intrigues him, so Mr. Butler takes him up onto the roof and instructs him to stand still up there in order to gain a good pose, an exercise that Bob himself had learned. Anne comes home and catches Bates in the act, and after he yells to her that he is going to be a butler, Mr. Butler appears behind him. When Bob and Tess return later on, Anne speaks with Bob in private, and after rebuking him both for what her son did today and for leaving him in the care of a stranger, she fires him. The next day, he packs his belongings and returns to his old apartment, but he leaves behind four of his toy robots at the front door of the house before he goes, symbolizing him and the family.

Some days later, Tess visits Bob at his apartment and tells him how sorry she is that he got fired, and he winds up helping her live out her dream of being a clothing designer by giving her a bunch of fabrics that he received as “severance pay” from working for a New York designer, as well as teaching her how to sew. She makes a few shirts and skirts, and while wearing one of each at school the following day, Morgan and Alex approach her and first apologize for bailing on her before expressing a liking for her shirt. When she tells them that she made it herself, they both reply that they want one. Tess also takes the time to patch things up with her longtime friend Sophie (Valerie Tian), whom she unintentionally alienated during her efforts to become one of the “cool kids”. Tess visits Bob again after school lets out to let him know that she had an awesome day, and Bates has come with her this time out of his continuing desire to be good at something, so Bob gives him a microphone. The next day, Tess puts on a fashion show for Anne, with Morgan, Alex, and Sophie modeling her clothes along with her and Bates acting as the emcee, and Anne happily hugs Tess once the show concludes.

The day after that, Anne pays Bob a visit herself, and she first praises him for being so good to her children before thanking him for getting Tess out of jail. She explains that she found out about it through a call that she received from Detective Alvarez, and she adds that Alvarez also complimented Bob on his loyalty and determination. She soon finds out from Bob that he has gotten a job on a round-the-world, year-long butler cruise, and it is scheduled to depart the day after tomorrow. She then gives him tickets to a Vincent Mai (himself) concert taking place tomorrow night that she was originally going to go to with Jacques (Rob LaBelle) before she broke up with him, thinking that he might have someone special that he could go with, and when Bob informs her that he doesn’t, she decides to go with him. The next morning, Jacques calls up Anne to try to win her back, but she tells him that she is going to the concert with Bob. Tess and Bates later visit Bob once again to help him pick out a good suit to wear, already sensing the burgeoning romantic feelings between him and their mother. We then see Jacques entering Mr. Butler’s butler school, which is closing down due to a lack of students, and he insults Mr. Butler for his five-day course and accuses him of not being a true professional. When he then labels Bob a liar on the grounds that this short-term course does not make him a proper butler, Mr. Butler defends Bob by telling Jacques that Bob is a finer man than most and that it has been an honor to know him.

Bob and Anne enjoy the concert that night, and it turns out that Bob is acquainted with Vincent Mai when he takes her backstage afterwards and Vincent greets him, and he and Anne accept an invitation from him to join him in an after-show meal. All the while, Jacques tries to get near Anne, but he is turned away by security each time because he doesn’t have a ticket. When Bob takes Anne back to her house, they find Jacques waiting in the driveway, and he informs Anne that Bob is not a proper butler. She replies that she doesn’t care, and then she tells Jacques that she is rehiring Bob and that he needs to leave her life for good, so Jacques takes off in a huff. Anne asks Bob if he would like to come back to work for her, but he refuses this offer on the grounds that it wouldn’t be appropriate (given that they just had a date and they have the romantic feelings that they have). He then heads home, and after Anne steps inside the house, Tess appears and asks her if she is going after him. She replies that he will be leaving on his cruise first thing in the morning.

Early the next morning, Tess and Bates wake Anne up and encourage her to go after Bob before his ship leaves port, telling her that he is a part of their family. They hurry down to the harbor, but they discover that the cruise ship has already departed and become depressed, thinking that they missed their only chance to get Bob back. Reverting back to her extremely clean ways, Anne decides to take her car to the car wash, and she tells Tess and Bates that she blames herself for losing Bob, but thanks them for forcing her to try to stop him and then tells them that she loves them so much. Moments later, she notices the kids’ facial expressions suddenly switch from gloomy to delighted after they look out the windshield, so she looks out the windshield herself and sees that Bob is working as one of the attendants. He explains to Anne that he changed his mind about going on the cruise, and he took the job here because it was listed early in the “C” section of the phone book. They then kiss each other passionately.

As the credits roll, Bob, Anne, Tess, and Bates are shown about to have Thanksgiving dinner, and Bates acknowledges Bob as his and Tess’ new father, signifying that he and Anne have gotten married in the interim. Mr. Butler is then shown to be working as the family’s new butler, but when he goes to carve the turkey, it explodes like the luau pig did.