W. is Here

Oliver Stone's latest has arrived. The biopic W. hit theaters this weekend to mixed reviews...

Salon -
There's nothing overtly or even subtly disreputable about Oliver Stone's "W.," which is exactly what's wrong with it. I admit that my hopes were probably too high: In these twilight days of the George W. Bush administration, I find my anger intensifying rather than abating, and I was hoping "W." would be a more cathartic exercise than it is.

Entertainment Weekly -
At least Brolin is never cheap. Representing a man who finds both salvation in Jesus and relief that one of his intelligence reports is only three pages long, the actor digs deep. He's the A in W., heh-heh. The rest is C+.

The Onion AV Club (see also Oliver Stone interview) -
It's a credit to Josh Brolin's superb performance that the film works at all; as the lead, he transcends a gallery of Saturday Night Live-level impersonations by seizing on the essence of Bush's character rather than his arsenal of funny mannerisms. Brolin plays Bush as an incurious, rule-from-the-gut leader who bought into the cowboy image his campaign teams liked to promote. As president, he comes across both as easily manipulated and as needing to be "the decider"; his advisers cleverly thread the needle by feeding him their ideas and making it seem like they were his.

The New York Times -
The megamillion-dollar question that hovers over Oliver Stone’s queasily enjoyable “W.,” his Oedipal story about the rise and fall, fall, fall of George W. Bush is: why? Neither a pure (nor impure) sendup of the president nor a wholesale takedown, the film looks like a traditional biopic with all the usual trappings, including name actors in political drag — Josh Brolin plays the frat boy who would be king, while Richard Dreyfuss creeps around in a Dick Cheney sneer — alternately choking on pretzels and spleen, and reciting all the familiar lines and lies. History is said to repeat itself as tragedy and farce, but here it registers as a full-blown burlesque.

And since this is a blog and I believe in the power of the internet, W. is running at 54% at Rotten Tomatoes.

(editor's note: I tried to get this up on Friday (Thursday for you east coasters) but just found the time, I'm a little busy trying to save the world.)