Movie 34: W.

Oliver Stone’s first screwball comedy. What would happen if you got an idiot alcoholic who’s always screwing up and made him President? Hilarity insues! Wait…..what do you mean this is a biopic? Oh, Dubya. Shit that did happen didn’t it…

Actually this is, to quote Fox News, a fairly fair and balanced movie. It would be easy to just mock Bush, make him look like a full and a monster and be done with it. It wouldn’t be very good film making though. While I can’t say I ever really got to a point where I’d want to get drunk with the guy, just not my kind of person I guess, this is far from a massive slagging match. It shows some of his mistakes, both youthful and verbal, but also shows that he’s just a guy who took the wrong advice from some folks. And who has MASSIVE daddy issues. Pretty much anyone can see that anyway, hell I’ve been thinking that was part of the reason behind Iraq for years.

It would also have been easy to just characateur the people involved. Jon Stewart does a great job of that, or did, on The Daily Show. So Josh Brolin could have been a laughing monkey, Richard Dreyfus could have been the Penguin from the old Batman series…but they aren’t. They do nail some of the mannerism of the people they’re playing. Dreyfus had the twisted mouth snarl down a few times in the movie. Alas we didn’t get too see too much of what could have been done with the VP, but this movie was called W after all.

At times, hell for most of the movie, you could close your eyes and have trouble telling the difference between Brolin and Bush. He absolutely nails the voice and some of the physical characteristics of Dubya. And all the other notables do pretty damned good too.

But this isn’t Saturday Night Live. It’s not a mocking sketch, it’s not a slander piece from what I can tell, it’s just the story of the man laid out there. He might argue some of the daddy stuff but who wouldn’t. For everyone expecting a liberal hate attack of a “look at the silly monkey man” film you’ll be disappointed. But it’s hardly Frost / Nixon either.

Good, not amazing, and the Republicans among you if there are any will probably still hate it so just give it a miss.

Next up: Stone of Destiny