Review of W. (2008) by Jeffrey N — 08 Oct 2014

As an independent, I consider myself pretty neutral, party-wise. In fact, I voted for Bush twice. The first time because I didn't know any better and hated anything to do with Bill Clinton. The second time because while I had no interest in voting for Bush, I had even less interest in voting for Kerry. So, I get that Bush was immensely flawed and that if any of W is in fact true, then it's pretty scary someone like that can get to the Presidency.

That being said, I've lost a lot of respect for Oliver Stone, a wonderful filmmaker who, even when stretching the truth for the sake of getting a message out, has made some of my favorite movies capable of sucking me in and holding my attention for hours. He is becoming the old uncle who you know is slowly losing his mind and all that respect you had for him as a kid begins to be diminished with each passing day you see his mental health slide.

No matter what point Oliver Stone was trying to convey, and no matter how much truth there was to the content of his movie, he completely lost me when, instead of just using factual, public instances of Dubya's ignorance (for which there is plenty), Oliver destroys any ability to show an objective view of the Dubya rise to power by including private conversations, which he couldn't possibly know, and intentionally throws in a line or two implying pure stupidity. Dubya on the toilet having a private conversation with Laura indicating that there has never been a father-and-son presidential pair, but when Laura points out John Adams and John Quincy Adams, his response is, "Yeah, but that was 300 years ago.".

What is the point in that? Oliver, you don't have to sell us on the fact that he was an idiot. We all think that. In fact, we all seem a bit dumber ourselves for voting him into office in the first place. Some of us, twice. And while there are very interesting moments showing what I'm sure are relatively accurate insecurities of his place in the family name and the love of his father, when you pepper all of it with your own personal political smear campaign, you lose the audience.

This was a poor movie released at an opportunistic time to kick a president while he was down after spending 8 years attempting to lead the largest world power through the worst domestic crisis since the Civil War and its unfortunate downstream impact around the world.

I'm the first to criticize how dumb we are as a society, but we are all capable of making mistakes. The rest of us are lucky that an arrogant, past-his-prime, tasteless director isn't pouncing on us ready to make a film not only re-showing the world our poor decisions, but also blowing it out of proportion for the sake of amplifying those poor decisions. In fact, even making some up. I know Oliver's intent was to expose Dubya's stupidity. He only exposed his own.