Imagine Lorne Michaels wants to produce a comedy-laced drama. He has a virtually unlimited budget but instead of his cast of not ready for prime time players, he has all of Hollywood available at his fingertips. He hires an A-list director, picks as his target a lame duck president with but a few months left in office and off he goes.That's pretty much what W. feels like. While we can watch Tony Hopkins play Nixon or Paul Giamatti play John Adams with nary a thought, the recency of Stone's subject puts the stench of "skit" on his film and it can't escape it, no matter how seriously he or his actors take it.
Most of them do. James Cromwell is all business as the senior Bush, only sounding like Dana Carvey for his first line delivered. Richard Dreyfuss is at his Machiavellian best as the brains behind Bush's two terms, and specifically the surge towards the Iraq War, the present day focus of the film. Scott Glenn and Jeffrey Wright were casting coups as Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell, respectively, and Ellen Burstyn brings more character to Barbara Bush than 30 years in the limelight ever did. Elizabeth Banks is wasted in a non-role where she does little but vaguely resemble Laura Bush, while Thandie Newton makes out somewhat worse, getting just a couple lines as Condi Rice while having been "uglified" for the role. At least she's funny when she speaks, as she's asked to do so with prosthetic tooth and/or a massive overbite. And then there's ol' W himself...
Josh Brolin is all but unrecognizable as our current Commander-in-Chief, slipping so far into the characterization that he seems to out-Bush Bush at times. He's not going for Will Ferrell-type "strategerie," but that doesn't mean there aren't scads of laughs to be found, particularly when he masterfully pulls off W.'s sheepish/cocksure chuckle or tells Cheney that he, in fact and of course, "is the decider."
Such bon mots are the joys of W., and really all that it can be taken for. Whereas we can safely write off artistic license when a filmmaker does a bio on someone from centuries ago (after all, who are we to dispute the conversations between long dead faces?), that feat isn't so easily accomplished when all the subjects of the film are not just with us, but still in office (in most cases). How seriously can we take one of the many scenes between George W. and his father when we know damn well that none of the parties involved were involved at all with the film?
For what it's worth, Stone doesn't take advantage of that lack of accountability - or at least, it doesn't appear so. His is a sympathetic picture of our President, a man that we are stuck with now and in our rear-view mirrors, for better or worse. He paints G.W. as an occasionally bitter, often playful, frequently drunk schlub with aspirations beyond his intellect but nothing worse than the best intentions for himself and, eventually, his country. And that's probably nicer than I'd be to any President that still says "nucular."
Fletch's Film Rating:
"Darn tootin!"
