Someone please tell me what the point of this movie is. If it’s meant to be satirical, which it is in spades, couldn’t it have been more LOL funny like SNL? If it’s meant to be some kind of historical political biopic, then all i can say is too soon, too soon. The gags, the famous Bushisms—they are still cringeworthy but somehow contrived to the point that they don’t make for much of a punch-line. Of course, much of this has to do with where this particular viewer is situated in time and history—no doubt that future generations won’t “get it” the same way that we do.
The placement of the famous lines are a bit awkward: consider the “rarely is the question asked: is our children learning?” Bushism–though I am not sure, it seems to have been placed at the wrong time: when Bush was running for governor, instead of president. The other one is “i read, i smoke, I admire”–which is supposedly what Laura said to her future mother in law, Barb Bush, but in the movie she says it to W. when they first meet.
I’m not a stickler for historical accuracy in these matters, but as mentioned before, it comes off, as someone who’s watched this history first-hand, as being contrived.
There were some other annoying and/or intriguing parts to this movie: Thandie Newton as Condi Rice. HEr first lines are terrible, mostly because she’s trying really hard to emulate an American accent, but her high-pitched voice just grates. And I honestly don’t know or care to remember what the real Condi sounds like, but Newton is just too affected. However, it gets better as the movie goes on. The other thing that is terrible is that they make her so homely, which is perhaps accurate, but which is painful for any devotee of Newton’s hotness to stomach. I just saw her in Rock N Rolla not too long ago, and the memories of her hotness remain fresh to this very day.
The other bit that is interesting is Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell. I love Wright but he just completely *lacks the gravitas* to be Colin Powell. He’s of a more slight build, not quite as stout and solid seeming as the General, and simply adding some fake white hairs doesn’t improve the situation a whole lot. Furthermore, he’s always talking in some kind of low, guttural voice which sounds every bit as painful and affected as Newton’s accent.
And how about that ongoing philosophical spat between Powell, the military man who knows the realities of fighting, versus Rummy and Cheney, the hawks that have never killed anything with two legs. The ongoing debates are a bit tedious, I have to say. I have no doubt that such debates went on in real life, but in the dialogue in the script is incredibly trite, with Powell going so far as to mention Cheney’s deferments from Vietnam, and the diabolical Cheney trying to use Powell’s military experience to his rhetorical advantage. They come across as two schoolboys in debate tournament. Then there’s a bit where they have a slideshow showing a map of Iraq and Iran with American flags covering the neighboring countries–illustrating the American-friendly sphere of influence in the mideast–and again, it just comes off as being too satirical, very much Wag the Dog or War, Inc. or Starship Troopers-esque.
Another strange portrayal was that of Tony Blair, whom we see on a visit to Crawford before the start of the Iraq invasion. He looks too young and acts a bit too naive to be the real Tony Blair, and just comes across as a total boob. I never liked the man but the portrayal here is just plain weird.
Then there was the whole thing with W. and his father, the whole you’ll never be good enough, Jeb is my favorite son dynamic which just, whatever its relation to the real life people, just comes across as a monumental cliche. James Cromwell—you can’t help but think of him in 24, so I guess he’s been type-cast as the creepy father. However, he comes across as a much more normal and smooth George Senior than the real life one, who always seemed to me, like, well, a wimp. In any case, this dynamic runs throughout the whole movie, and gets a bit tendentious after a short while. In a movie where there is little care for psychological realism, what is the point of showing this whole dynamic. Is it to offer some kind of theory for why W., the perennial underachiever, ended up as president? Is it to somehow humanize him? In any case, being a Bush-hater, i don’t think the film helped his case any, and I doubt that it was Stone’s intention to in the first place.
Mediocre.