W. [2008] Movie Reviews on CinemaClock

It's interesting that responses to the film are polarized in much the manner of responses to Bush. This tells me that Stone must be onto something in his portrayal. What might that be? Well, I think he manages to paint paradoxical features into Bush, the sort of characteristics that might make him attractive to some and repulsive to others. Most important, he seems to grasp that the most repulsive things in Bush are the things that many people won't even see. Bush has an IQ of 125, while the average IQ is 100. Nevertheless, he is a stupid man. Smart enough to become President, stupid enough to destroy the Presidency. This is one of the paradoxes of W. And Stone manages to show this intelligence and stupidity in action. For this reason, a lot of the humor and satire on Bush in this film is so subtle that it might even be missed. A number of times there were only two people laughing in the viewing I saw -- I would be one, and then some straggler in the seventh row. Of course you don;t really learn anything about Bush. This is a film. But what you get is an imaginative representation of the man that attempts, not to do history, but to make sense of history. I thought Stone did a good job.