Shemar Moore's Ill-Fated Early Role He Probably Wants You To Forget About
And in fact, he probably got his wish.
If Shemar Moore's best and most famous role is probably FBI Special Agent Derek Morgan, one of the main characters throughout most seasons of Criminal Minds, then his worst role is almost undoubtedly Freddy Roland in Butter (2008) (not to be confused with the more successful films of the same name), alternatively titled Never 2 Big.
Butter is a criminal drama, written and directed by Peter Gathings Bunche. Moore's character in it is a big-shot music industry executive, whose cousin, Blusette (Salli Richardson), is a successful and well-known singer.
But she turns up dead after refusing to sign a new record contract. And Freddy is framed for her murder, so he has to look for answers and confront gangsters and crooks, who infest the world of music.
And this film is primarily notable for two things. First, it has a decent cast – not exactly composed of A-list stars, but with good, well-known actors in all the significant roles.
Besides Shemar Moore, notable names among that cast include Donnie Wahlberg, Ernie Hudson, Tony Todd and Nia Long.
And second, it has dropped into obscurity about as soon as it was released. It premiered on HBO as a HBO original film, and later was distributed by video.
And though in some places it has decent audience ratings, apparently being liked by those few people who watched it, it clearly flew under the radar of almost everyone.
Rotten Tomatoes, for example, could not find any critical reviews for it at all. In fact, even googling this film is a bit difficult, unless you use its alternate title, because there are at least two more films named Butter, both of which get placed a lot higher in search results.
It is possible that the film was not sufficiently advertised and otherwise never given a chance, like many direct-to-video films, but let's be honest, poor writing and direction clearly were among the chief causes of such lackluster reception.
All in all, Shemar Moore is likely glad that the movie turned out so obscure that it cannot be called a stain on his career.