Posted on 06/21/2009 11:35:57 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Oliver Stone doesn't do comedy, intentionally. But perhaps he should: The half-baked, hayseed "Hamlet" he's created in " W." -- his very speculative biopic about our current president -- feels alive only when it ventures into the comically absurd.
Despite Josh Brolin's genius and the fully realized portrayal he gives this character called George W. Bush, the movie operates at a paradoxical, dramatic disadvantage: It spends more than two hours trying to interest us in the fact that its subject isn't interesting. It could have been a public service announcement.
The Stanley Weiser screenplay fails by attempting too much -- it begins just after 9/11, lurches back to Yale, Skulls and Bones, a pregnant, paid-off girlfriend; a night in jail, a growing attraction to alcohol and resistance to steady employment, all shadowed by a lifelong tension between W. and his father. ( James Cromwell, masterfully, imbues the elder Bush with affection/ revulsion.)
With his father an emotional ghost, W. is a lost soul -- literally at times, when he actually looks around and wonders where he is.
The Bush cabinet is an interesting lot, but the effect, unavoidably, perhaps, is like a " Saturday Night Live" skit rather than solid drama: Richard Dreyfuss plays Dick Cheney as quasi-Quasimodo; Jeffrey Wright is a froggy, too-sympathetic Colin Powell, and Thandie Newton's Condi Rice is a combo of Dana Carvey's "Church Lady" and an unoiled amusement park ride. It's one weird performance.
The history is suspect, of course -- Dubya, rather than Lee Atwater, is credited with Willie Horton, for instance -- but the problems lie in the movie's DNA: Stone wants Bush to be both village idiot and evil mastermind. He can't have it both ways.
PLOT The amazing, almost true adventures of George W. Bush, as refracted through the warped prism of director Oliver Stone.
CAST Josh Brolin, James Cromwell, Richard Dreyfuss, Thandie Newton
LENGTH 2:09
PLAYING AT Area theaters
BOTTOM LINE Feels longer than the Bush administration.
STAR BUCKS
Stone rolls at the box office
Director Oliver Stone may or may not hit box-office pay dirt with his controversial "W." Here's a look at Stone's five highest-grossing films to date. (Perhaps it's instructive to note that his 1995 presidential biopic, "Nixon," grossed about $13 million.)
Platoon (1986) - $138,530,565
Any Given Sunday (1999) - $75,530,832
JFK (1991) - $70,405,498
World Trade Center (2006) - $70,278,893
Born on the Fourth of July (1989) - $70,001,698
SOURCE: Boxofficemojo.com
Mr. Streisand can’t act his way out of a paper bag. His career peaked at “Marcus Welby, M.D.”
And Stone is the most self-indulgent film maker ever. His movies suck so much they actually bend space/time itself.
Oliver Stone made a movie?
Wow. This film has been in and out of Theater a long time ago. It is on DVD now. Are you just reminding us that this was made? lol.
Oliver Stone does to history what the New York Times does to news. I’ve heard it described as “political pornography.”
This is not James Brolin. It is Josh Brolin, his son. The guy from Goonies.
** alGores GloBull warming crap
** Ollie Stones BS, putting him as the main subject of ridicule
** Mikey Moore, subject of movie would be a fat slob not getting Cuban medical care
** Bawney Fwank, trying to keep his hands off of a young mans A$$
** Chuck U Shumer, subject of movie could be his work out regimen for 50yrd dash to camera interview
** Babbs Boxer, trying to look official and powerful in the eyes of Brig. General
Cast:
* Will Smith as "Benny", the mixed-race Manchurian Candidate running for President
* John Ratzenburger as "Moe", the bumbling, well-meaning, completely wrong, gaffe-prone VP
* Robert Downey, Jr as "Bahm", the Jewish political strategist who sends dead fish to political opponents
* Tom Cruise as the inventor of Astro-Turf political movements (reviving his type-cast roll in "Tropic Thunder") who has to edit out four-letter words before loading the Teleprompter for the candidate
* Omarosa Manigault Stallworth as Rochelle, the America-hating wife of the candidate
* Joe Pesci as "Jerry", the social gadfly, gay, drug provider who 'entertains' the candidate in a limo while the candidate held state office prior to running for President.
* Forest Whitaker as the mean spirited, America-hating, libertion-theology-based pastor of the candidate's church
* Jamie Foxx as the gay choir director mysteriously killed for "knowing too much" about the candidate's private life on the down-low
* Playing themsleves, many media anchors and talking heads will make cameo appearances as they transform from cheerleaders for the candidate to cheerleaders and propagandists for the President as he enters office. Several were screened to make sure their legs tingled well enought for the big screen
Coming to you, hopefully before the 2012 election cycle.
When she did the on-air proctoscope, she showed her true personality.
>>When she did the on-air proctoscope, she showed her true personality.<<
LOL
This has been one of the cirular arguments of the left for last 9 years. They can't seem to decide which it is, and yet they don't see the inherent contradiction in their assertion of both.
The left is truly delusional.
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