W: A Review

W is an entertaining movie, but not a good one. It is entertaining in the same sense that a Will Ferrell DVD of SNL’s greatest Bush skits would be. Humorous, funny, and lacking any coherent plot.

The film is about the run up to the war in Iraq and the “debate” going on in the Bush White House. I put debate in quotation marks because it’s quite clear from the outset what the result will be. The president has already made up his mind. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al are each manipulating him toward a predetermined outcome. Only brave Powell opposes their plans, but his opposition is quickly overcome as he is portrayed as brave, if overly loyal footsoldier. Vice-President Cheney in particular is remarkable (Richard Dreyfus in an Oscar caliber performance). Cheney is the driving force behind the invasion plans and gives a powerful speech in favor of world domination to the assembled group of advisors. But his speech is so diabolical that it seemed more appropriate to a Bond (or Austin Powers) enemy. All he needed was, as one critic noted, a cat to stroke.

Throughout the film there are flashbacks (and at times flashbacks within flashbacks) about Bush’s life. The one recurring motivation for Bush in the film is that he is constantly trying to overcome his father (played by James Cromwell in an excellent performance) and to demonstrate his superiority. From his frat boy days at Yale to (literally) fighting with his father in the Oval Office, he’s constantly up against Bush 41. Poppa Bush opposes W at every turn. He dismisses Junior when he wants to run for governor of Texas, when he wants to run for president, and in one of the final scenes merely shakes his head at his son’s decisions in the Middle East.

But the central focus on the film is always Bush the Younger. Many of Bush’s infamous malapropisms (misunderestimated, “Fool me once, shame on you” etc) are here, though not in the context in which they were originally uttered. Although the common anti-Bush tropes are covered in “W” (Bush was motivated by competition with his father: check, God told Bush to run for president: check, the US invaded Iraq for oil: check), Stone eases up on the most left-leaning criticism of Bush. Some of his opponents have claimed that he deliberately used imaginary WMD weapons as the causus belli for the Iraq war (with the brief “Bush lied, people died” mantra). But Stone does not endorse this view and instead "credits" incompetence instead of malevolence. George Tenet (CIA director) summarizes the mistake by simply saying "We were wrong when we thought there were WMDs."

Ultimately, the problem with W is not that Stone aims too high, but too low. By portraying Bush as a self-confident dunce, he gives no insight into Bush the man. He provides no understanding on some basic questions that the narrative suggests: What did a demure wall flower like Laura see in him? Other than affecting his alcohol consumption, how did Bush’s religious conversion change him? And the ultimate question of course: How did someone so stupid end up as a President?

In the end, W is a failure as a narrative film. It is a disorganized mess with neither a coherent plot nor structure.

And yes, I recognize that that description is exactly what many critics apply to Bush’s eight years in office.