W.

Someday, a feature movie will be made about George W. Bush that gives real insight into the man’s logic-defying presidency.

Someday, Oscar-winner Oliver Stone will stop taking the decade off, and make another hard-hitting and well-crafted film.

Unfortunately, judging from the steaming mess that is Oliver Stone’s W., that day isn’t today.

This time, I’m not going to waste words on the plot. It’s about the life of George W. Bush, beginning with him as an Ivy league Frat brother and ending a few months after declaring the Iraq War as “Mission Accomplished”. If you’re unfamiliar with the details, then you must have spent the last eight years in a coma. Welcome back – good to see ya up and around!

The movie is a colossal misfire, and I put the blame squarely on director Oliver Stone and writer Stanley Weiser. While Josh Brolin does a remarkable job mimicking the 43rd Commander in Chief, the movie plays the man with so much farce, that they might as well have had Will Ferrell reprise his impersonation from his Saturday Night Live days. Dubya, and almost his entire inner circle, aren’t portrayed so much as they are spoofed, and whether it was intentional or not it doesn’t work. Nothing is played serious enough to stir up real drama, and nothing is played with enough wit to outline the events as comedy. Instead, Stone leaves his all star cast wandering somewhere in between…aimless as rats in a maze.

While I applaud Stone’s gutsiness in making a film about a sitting president, it causes a problem he might not have anticipated. Every major character is a person who has been all over the 24-hour news networks for the last eight years. So while I’m not a fan of Condoleeza Rice, there’s no way she’s the nasal lackie Thandie Newton plays her as. On the flip side, my problem with Richard Dreyfuss’ portrayal of Dick Cheney is that he doesn’t play the man gritty enough. Had the film hit screens even five years from now, some of these details might have faded from my conciousness. However, when you choose to cover a song we just heard the last guy sing, we’re going to notice every subtle flaw.

Then there’s the script itself. Stan Weiser tapped a nerve twenty years ago when he wrote WALL STREET. It has stood the test of time and encapsulated the “Me Decade” rather accurately. Unfortunately though, the man must be rusty, because W. is poorly paced can’t decide whether it wants to sympathize with President Bush or roast him alive. The script seems far more interested in paying lip service to Bush’s multiple life failings, than it does in exaimining his actual presidency.

Perhaps that would indeed have made for a compelling movie – even if most of these details hadn’t been repeated ad naseaum for eight years now. However, at every turn – be it his time as a Texas oil man, to his years running baseball’s Texas Rangers, right up to his time as Governor of Texas – his story is short-changed. It’s as if Weiser took Bush’s Wikipedia page, re-arranged the details for a more interesting narrative, and wrote “roll credits” at the bottom.

There were two positive things about the movie, and they are the two scenes that have Bush and his cabinet assembled to discuss the details and strategies of the Iraq invaision. In each instance, we feel as though we’re finally seeing those tense, historical conversations for real. In each instance, Jeffrey Wright stands out as Colin Powell. While his portrayal is far from flawless, he gets the general’s spirit right, and comes across as the man in the room who speaks for 75% of us today.

The scenes- one planning the course of action, the other revealing that the intelligence was faulty, and no WMD’s will be found -are tense, intriguing, and stir in many of us the regret of hindsight. The only bad thing about them is that it leaves us wanting more, and doesn’t give us any.

Oliver Stone made his name on being fearless and controversial. Perhaps those qualities in his body of work are what left me disappointed and disgusted. With a resume that includes PLATOON, JFK, and NATURAL BORN KILLERS, I anticipated Stone sharpening his scalpel to disect Bush’s legacy for all to see. Instead, he did nothing worse than shove an apple in his mouth and roast him like he was sitting front and centre at The Friar’s Club.

Note to Stone – Bush was already roasted in 2006 by Stephen Colbert. His was much better than the lame jokes you told with this movie…and Colbert had the balls to do it to his face.

Matineescore: ★ out of ★ ★ ★ ★

What did you think? Please leave comments with your thoughts and reactions on W.