Starring Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, and David Oyelowo. Rated PG.

Remember when Nicole Kidman peed on Zac Efron in The Paperboy? The Lee Daniels who made that kinky, kooky movie has now made the Forrest Gump of black-American history in the nonkinky, nonkooky, and decidedly affecting Lee Daniels’ The Butler. No one urinates on anyone, although Liev Schreiber, playing Lyndon B. Johnson, has a nice moment on the john, asking a White House butler for prune juice.

The butler is Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), fictional counterpart of Eugene Allen, a real guy who undoubtedly witnessed weird things while serving eight U.S. presidents. Daniels gets into that, but he’s busy mashing the entire civil-rights movement with a man’s personal saga, beginning with a cotton-plantation matriarch (Vanessa Redgrave) telling Cecil, “I’m gonna teach you how to be a house nigger.”

This is handy when Cecil begins his White House gig alongside fellow butlers Lenny Kravitz and Cuba Gooding Jr. It’s seriously stars on parade, with Robin Williams oddly cast as Eisenhower and James Marsden decent as JFK. Most entertainingly bizarro are John Cusack as a sweaty, tormented Nixon and Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda inhabiting the special weirdness of the Gipper and “Just say no”.

Meanwhile, Cecil’s boozy wife, Gloria (Oprah Winfrey), resents his preoccupying job, and son Louis (David Oyelowo) turns civil-rights activist, eventually joining the Black Panthers. This all equals surprisingly raw tension and some hep threads.

Daniels is not subtle, especially concerning America’s wee racial issues. But he’s wily at juxtaposing moments such as a protest at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch counter with a serene state dinner. And he elicits real performances, particularly from the lovely, understated Whitaker as the stoic butler, who is lost after wearing “two faces my entire life”.

There is great heart here, if not quite greatness. Importantly: “When a white man calls, always assume the worst.” We can’t dispute that.