Movie Review: "W"

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This movie is not as funny as it could have been. Indeed, it could well have been something of a semislapstick-nature film, with non-stop laughs, as in a Mel Brooks film.
But, although it had its amusing moments, it was a fairly serious semihistorical study of George W. Bush, the very soon ex-president. It flashes back and forth among the 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, and early twenty-first century. It gives only a few minutes to the time when the young George W. Bush was doing drugs, boozing, and breaking the law in his late teens and early twenties. Then, it gives only a few minutes more to the time when he was lying, stealing, robbing, making enemies, fornicating, and failing businesses in his early twenties and thirties. (There is barely a mention of a young girl whom he had got pregnant; she disappeared from the screen faster than she disappeared from history!)
George grew more arrogant as he aged, and a bit stranger. He had various jobs given to him by his rich daddy and his daddy's friends, and he utterly failed at each and every one. His personal psychotic break climaxed in his idea that "God" told him to run for the office of president-- another job given on a silver platter by his daddy.
He found new ways to lie, and people whom he could hire to lie for him, as president. He lied the U.S. into a war that cost about three trillion dollars, a war that murdered four thousand American girls and boys, and nearly a million innocent Middle Eastern men, children, and women. The movie did not, could not, take the time to explore all the massive errors and terrible mistakes made by an administration ruled entirely by greed. The movie does not go into the sad history of the worst president in the history of the world. It just gets a "toe in the
water" as he begins the Iraq war.
This movie is semi-serious, and gives George a chance; it records even one of his nightmares, which must have been abundant. And it exposes how he feels like a "failure" to his father, in sibling rivalry with his brothers. George is human, but this very fact can dilute the true evil, and also can obscure the real ignorance, lack of education, and absence of sophistication that marks this man, consumed with personal greed, and obsessed with the success of the wealthy, including his beloved corporations. The movie does the best it can in its short duration, taking a small "slice" of the complex man's history. It does not have time (who does?) more fully to explore his evil, his incompetence, or his ignorance.
The next president will require at least decades even to begin to undo all the damage done by George. It will take our country centuries completely to recover, especially on an international scale. So, let's make sure that we elect a president who is committed to ending the stupidity, ineptitude, and just plain dumbness that has stained our country for the past eight years.
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