[BCWWF]

I'm sure there was a thread about this movie at some point, but searching the forums for "W" didn't come up with anything.

I rented it two weekends ago and was pretty unimpressed. Josh Brolin is an awesome actor, but this movie was just a long cliche. I wasn't sure going in if this was supposed to be a comedy or drama or what, and I'm still unsure what it was. It wasn't really funny, and it wasn't insightful at all as it just built on stereotypes of Bush and didn't feel at all like it was an authentic portrayal of his life.

Probably what solidified this movie as being pretty bad was the need to throw in out-of-context anecdotes and quotes that didn't add anything to the movie. The scene with him choking on pretzels? Yes, it happened. So? Then throwing out the "mis-underestimated" and other out-of-context misquotes just made the movie seem like it was trying really hard to show that it did some research.

Finally, it would have been nice if this movie picked which way it was going to slant and stuck with it. The premise that it was supposed to be somewhat objective is just stupid. The character of George W. Bush was portrayed as completely incompetent (no matter how poorly he did as president, he's not an outward idiot like the movie portrayed him). To justify it by making H.W. look good wasn't really believable. Then the glorification of Colon Powell was pretty disgusting too. He was just as guilty as everybody else in that administration, and if he did have the guts that the movie portrayed he would have actually done something about it.