Thursday, October 23, 2008

Movie Review: W.

I saw Oliver Stone's W. last Sunday. Avoid this film, it's 2 hours and 11 minutes you won't get back and won't get much out of. It's real problem is that it can't figure out what it wants to be. It's a speculative biography, with actors who look very much like their real life counterparts but who speak in cliched lines sprinkled with quotes you've heard them say in other contexts. They're imitations not portrayals. It's not a parody and it's not particularly funny. It's not an attack piece as you might expect; it's actually pretty tame.

Bush is shown as incompetent at most things and a horrible leader of people who has no clue what's happening in his administration. He just assume things are fine until he finds out they aren't. Given that you only see the other characters in scenes with W. you never get the sense that they're particularly competent either. I mean Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rove are evil-masterminds right? They've systematically come up with ways that unraveled our nation. You only ever see them placating Bush.

Ebert's totally wrong on this one. It's not worth watching it for free on cable.

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