Review in a Hurry: Director Oliver Stone has a no-win proposition with this CliffsNotes life story of our 43rd president. If he doesn't make Dubya look like John Wayne and Jesus combined, the right will go nuts. If he shows any sympathy for Bush, the left will go nuts. But whatever your political bent, we can all come together as Americans and agree on one thing: The movie just isn't very good.
The Bigger Picture: There probably is an epic comedy in the story of how a former drunk, draft dodger and overall screwup wound up the last president of the 20th century. It's just nowhere to be found in this overlong SNL sketch.
George W. Bush (Josh Brolin with a Will Ferrell Texas accent) gets every opportunity: He's heir to wealth and a political dynasty, he attends the best schools, he's rescued from numerous business failures and greased through Vietnam and finally he gets a baseball team to play with. But it's never enough as he struggles under the shadow of his father, George H.W. Bush (played with patrician disdain by James Cromwell). He always feels he's owed more.
Why? Who knows? Stone doesn't offer much for motivation, resorting to cheap Freudian analysis. The story jumps around Dubya's life with no discernable pattern, always coming back to the war in Iraq, but never giving any new insight into it. In spite of an attack of empathy for Bush at the end, we never learn the reason he does anything, let alone why he's mangled so much, so badly.
The 180—a Second Opinion: Some of the supporting cast transform themselves, like Thandie Newton, who is unrecognizable as she crawls inside the skin of Condi Rice.