W. (2008)

Rated: PG-13 for language including sexual references, some alcohol abuse, smoking and brief disturbing war images.
Length: 129 minutes
Grade: DNF
Budget: $25 million
Box Office: $38 million (26 U.S., 4 Intl., 8 DVD)

Written by: Stanley Weiser (Wall Street, Project X)
Directed by: Oliver Stone (World Trade Center, Alexander, Any Given Sunday, Nixon, Natural Born Killers, JFK, The Doors, Born on the Fourth of July, Talk Radio, Wall Stret, Platoon)
Starring: Josh Brolin, Colin Hanks, Toby Jones, Dennis Boutsikaris, Jeffrewy Wright, Thandie Newton, Scott Glenn, Richard Dreyfuss, Bruce McGill, and James Cromwell.

Summary:

The life and times of George W. Bush, or something like that.

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Comments:

What would you get if you took a Saturday Night Live sketch with terrible make-up, removed all the comedy from it, used actors to play real people they clearly hated, and made it last two hours? W. Seriously, at the beginning, both my wife and I thought this was a joke that surely could not have been the basis of a movie by Oliver Stone. But, no. The joke didn’t stop (or have a punchline). But for twenty minutes, we endured this movie before realizing that it was never going to get any better. The contrast between this failure and a stunning success like Frost/Nixon couldn’t be clearer. Actors should never play characters they can’t respect or love, and the hatred of these liberal actors for their conservative roles was seething. Also the goal of having people who superficially look like the people being impersonated here was an idiotic gimmick that should have been jettisoned for getting better actors or at least ones who could actually play the roles. In short, I did not like this. Was that not clear yet?