Leofwine_draca I should point out at the outset of this review that I've never seen the anime or read the manga version of BLACK BUTLER; I only watch live action movies as a rule (although I make an exception for Studio Ghibli) so I came to this completely new. I suppose the film it most resembled for me was DEATH NOTE, another live action adaptation of a popular anime, but compared to DEATH NOTE, BLACK BUTLER is a huge disappointment.I suppose this isn't a bad film per se; rather, it's simply not very good. It's a predictable tale about a young girl fighting crime with a demon butler at her side. There's a whole Faustian thing going on here (again), but the story line is so slow and mannered that I was twiddling my thumbs and waiting for something interesting to happen. In addition, I found the leading characters unremarkable and unlikeable, and the efforts to depict the butler as some kind of 'cool' guy fall flat; I thought he was a posturing ponce.The plot takes a long time to get going and involves the usual stereotypes about betrayals and twists and an evil megamind planning to unleash a deadly virus on the public. The story is augmented with average CGI effects, neither particularly good nor particularly bad. There's a teen/young adult feel to the whole thing that made me feel like I was too old to be watching it at times. As for the action, it's slick and heavily stylised, incorporating way too much slow motion for my liking. BLACK BUTLER is certainly an inventive and fresh-looking film, but one I felt distinctly 'meh' about.

Raven Oh dear, where do I start with this one... I know! I shall first give it the title of "So bad it's good", to a Black Butler fan at least (Not knowing the Anime will make the film a little bit more interesting). As Black Butler fans my cousin and I did indeed get a few laughs out of it, though i doubt most of the laughs were meant by the director.To tell the truth the characters are boring although i did find myself having one favorite, and that would be the reincarnation of Madam Red, and it's only really because she at least was not bound by the original character too much, unlike the unoriginal copies of Ciel and May Rin.Fans of the show might also be a bit surprised to find that instead of being in the Victorian era (which suited the show wonderfully) the film is set in a (semi-)modern world. Then again anime live actions aren't known for being the best.But I digress, it's not too bad if you haven't seen the anime and if you have prepare yourself for the funniest yet cringiest retelling of the first couple episodes with a weird twist.

twinkleshinne Okay so I'm not going to spoil the plot but I'll recommend to watch this movie it's very epic and dynamic in some way the actors acted very well truly I was quiet surprised with the genuinity of their acting since it was a imitation oh well it left a nice impression especially if you watch it in a blu-ray haha I've liked kuroshitsuji since it first started and even till now, if there were to be made other movies or few more anime seasons I'd be very delighted to watch them because I love this black butler once again about the movie i'll definitely say that I recommend it though some might not really like it but if you appreciate the plot and the actors and the work they went through to create it I'd say that I'm grateful to them.

3xHCCH "Black Butler" is a beloved manga that my daughter and friends liked very much. So when a movie version came out, they were all excited to go see it. I have not read the manga "Kuroshitsuji" yet, so I felt I needed to see the film first myself before she does to see if it is okay for her age group. The local film classification board had rated it R- 13, but they had not been entirely consistent the way they classify films per appropriate age.The beginning narration sets the film in a near future time, when the world was divided into East and West. The West was headed by a Queen who sent her "watchdogs" to keep her enemies at check. In such a world, a "Demon's Curse" killer is going around killing diplomats by some sort of gruesome instant mummification process. Alarmed, the Queen chooses an orphaned aristocrat, Earl Genpo Kiyoharu, as her "watchdog" to get to the bottom of this matter. The young Earl has under his service a butler of many skills, Sebastian, who does whatever his young master wills him to. It turns out that Sebastian's talents are because of his demonic nature, for which the Earl will have to pay for with his soul. I believe that this film deviates much from the book by making Kiyoharu to be actually a girl Shiori pretending to be a boy in order to secretly exact revenge on her parents' killers. This also made it possible for a love angle to develop between master and servant, which of course was not in the original manga. The original setting in the manga was Victorian England, but here we only get the Victorian-looking grand manor and colorful gardens of the Genpo family instead.The opening sequence alone where Sebastian takes on an entire warehouse full of gangsters only with his butter knife sets the incredible whimsical tone for the whole film. There would be violent fight scenes, murder scenes, death scenes, as well as scenes of drug abuse, and the disturbing demonic subplot, which would automatically make this film rated R-16 in my book. In between these violent scenes though, the film's momentum dips a lot with long talky explanatory scenes.The acting department is on the campy side. The lead actors playing Sebastian and Kiyoharu are both androgynous-looking which seems to be the current rage among the younger generation. There was even more campy acting from the actors playing the clumsy maid Lynn and Kiyoharu's guardian, his Auntie Hanae. All the one-dimensional villains they faced also come from the same school of exaggerated campy acting.Overall, this is a confused film with a rather convoluted plot which did not have a clear direction that it wanted to take. If we were to only judge it with this film, it does make me wonder what those fans of the original manga loved in it. This film alone is occasionally entertaining anyway but it most probably could have been done or adapted much better than what came out now.