Friday, October 31, 2008

W. Movie Review


With a production budget of 25 million, W. the story of George W. Bush has only made 12.8 million so far. This movie was very unsatisfying, It was neither hilarious nor critical enough when it came to George Bush's life. I mean, people where literally falling asleep in the theater.

As it was Oliver Stone who did the JFK movie, I expected it to be a lot more critical of Bush's huge failures in the white house. The story skipped over 9/11 and only briefly touched on the 2000 election in Florida. They basically told us what we already knew about Bush.

They also painted him out to be never good enough for his father. He is always trying to appear better than his older brother Jeb as well. I really don't think anyone feels sorry for him and don't know why Stone is trying to humanize Bush and make him out to be an ignorant southerner. You don't graduate Yale while being stupid and ignorant. They also skipped over the fact that Bush and Kerry where both Skull and Bones members. They only say that Bush was in a regular fraternity at Yale.

I wanted to get my money back after the first ten minutes, but part of me hoped they would delve deeper and make the story more interesting. No such luck. The movie title should have been "Just Claim Ignorance". Because that is what they did when it came to discussing the WMD's and justification for Iraq. They also made it like W. had a personal vendetta against Saddam because of what his father had gone through against him. Well if that was true why didn't they just shoot Saddam instead of giving him a trial?

They portrayed Carl Rove as a nerdy political adviser who could't understand people. Condoleeza Rice was made out to be innocent through ignorance as was Colin Powell who argued against going into Iraq. While Dick Cheney was played by Richard Dreyfus, so he was slightly sinister in parts, but not enough to despise him.

This movie won't catch up to its budget because it is too soft on Bush for democrats and not funny enough for republicans. It is like watching a semi documentary replay of everything Bush did in his administration but no insight into why he really did it. Going into Iraq for oil, that is not the real reason or we would have taken the oil. Control of the region may be realistic, but they didn't delve into that theory enough. It is a sub par flick and you should save your money for any other movie that's out right now.

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