“W.”
Starring Josh Brolin
Released: Oct. 17, 2008

WATCH THE TRAILER

Not the hilarious parody you may be expecting, but still a very enjoyable, enlightening movie.

Note: Senior editor Lizzy Warner differed with Lauren in her opinion of "W." For Lizzy's review, click here.

THESE DAYS, IT'S hard to find someone who genuinely likes the Bush administration, or even someone who doesn't have something bad to say about our president.

It seems that it would be even harder to find a movie about George W. Bush that doesn't poke fun of every aspect of his very being, especially one directed by notorious Bush-bashing director Oliver Stone.

In that way, "W." is a total surprise. Just the very name, most commonly pronounced "Dub-ya," presents a very mocking tone that you would think is going to carry into the movie, but what you actually get is a strangely endearing look at the life of George W. Bush.

The movie begins, after a strange seconds-long shot of Bush standing in an empty baseball stadium pretending that it isn't actually empty, with a meeting in the Oval Office.

Bush (Josh Brolin), Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss), Karl Rove (Toby Jones), Condoleezza Rice (Thandie Newton), Donald Rumsfeld (Scott Glenn), and the whole gang are all present at this meeting, the point of which, as we very quickly find out, is to come up with a name for the group of countries in the Middle East that are the focus of the war on terror.

As Cheney lurks creepily in the shadows, Bush eventually settles on "Axis of Evil," and with that the scene shifts to 1966, where a much, much younger Bush, still played by Brolin, is in a tub of some sort of revolting liquid with alcohol being poured down his throat by potential frat "brothers."

This is the first of many flashback scenes, interspersed with scenes from Bush's presidency after 9/11. We see him spending the night in jail for some college prank he pulled, and trying to decide whether or not to call a war.

We see him fall in love with one woman, propose to her, dance with her on a bar, and then we never see her again. We see his inability to keep a job, right next to him awkwardly comforting injured soldiers in hospitals.

We watch him eat three sandwiches while Cheney talks to him about E. coli, then meet his eventual wife (Elizabeth Banks), and you wonder how she could possibly fall in love with the obnoxious prick who's picking food out of his teeth.

For the first few minutes, it's easy to think that all of this about Bush's background as an egotistical, Texas-stereotypical idiot is setup for what is about to be some hilarious roasting of the commander-in- chief, and it takes a little while to realize that that's not what this movie is.

This movie is a biography. If it's not mostly accurate, it definitely seems like it is in a way that it explains how a man like this, a bumbling Texan who makes up words and pronounces other ones wrong, got to be president. And it makes a weird sort of sense that makes you look at the man in a whole new light.

The George W. Bush in this film, one who is unbelievably close to the real thing, is a genuinely likable guy. He's a bit of a jerk sometimes, and doesn't always come off as the brightest crayon in the box, but it's easy to see that he means well, and that all he really wants to do is impress his father (James Cromwell).

A huge part of the film is the relationship between Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. The elder Bush has come to expect very little of Jr. because he's never really lived up to the family name. He spent his college years getting drunk and arrested for various little misdemeanors, and then had a drinking problem as he got older.

This relationship is played out extremely well; Bush Jr., even as president, still seems like a little boy at heart when dealing with his dad, and Sr. is very believable as a nice guy who's had a lot of success and wants even more from his sons.

Brolin and Cromwell's spot-on performances are not the only good performances in the film; all of the acting was excellent. Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice was probably the funniest, though her strange facial expressions belonged more on "Saturday Night Live" than in this semi-serious movie.

I liked the whole film. I'm not quite sure why I did. Everything from the name to the premise to the previews was deceiving, but I'm not sure there was any other way they could have promoted the movie successfully. Very few people would have gone to see a movie called "George W. Bush: A Mildly Serious Biography That Actually Makes You Sort of Like the Guy" that was advertised in previews as being a mildly serious biography that actually makes you sort of like the guy.

I only have one beef. Over all, the cinematography was good. It wasn't amazing, but it was pretty good. However, nearly every character got at least one extreme close-up, and I mean extreme, like, "Wow, get that camera away from that guy's face before that scar under his nose swallows me up like it swallowed up his upper lip!"

It looked as if a lot of the film was shot with a hand-held camera. This was sometimes a nice effect, and sometimes it was nauseating to watch. Especially since I got to the theater during the previews and ended up in the second row, I was getting really dizzy at some points. The shaky, heavy close-ups in some parts combined with the somewhat light and simple filming in others made for a rather odd movie-going experience.

All in all, the movie was good, in a totally different way from what I was expecting. I was really surprised when two hours were over, the credits were rolling, and I was sitting there going, "I actually really enjoyed that!"

"W." is currently playing at the Goodrich Savoy 16, 232 W. Burwash, Savoy, and the Beverly 18, 910 Meijers Drive, Champaign.

"W." AT A GLANCE

• Starring: Josh Brolin, Ellen Burstyn, James Cromwell, Richard Dreyfuss, Scott Glenn, Elizabeth Banks, Thandie Newton
• Directed by: Oliver Stone
• Written by: Stanley Weiser
• Genre: Biography, Comedy, Drama
• Rated: PG-13
• Runtime: 131 min.
• Release date: Oct. 17, 2008
• Summary (from IMDb): A chronicle of the life and presidency of George W. Bush by the director of "Platoon," "Wall Street," "JFK," and "Nixon"