W- The Movie

Well, leave it to Oliver to make ol' W sympathetic- and it was a smart move, 'cause any way ya cut it, he still comes out the presidential fool. Actually, the movie is a pretty superficial take overall- and yet, it still delivers for the simple fact that his entire life has been such a long, long trail of unabashed missteps and blunders, ignorance and arrogance. So you shake your head and smile at a life of continual failure doomed to success. All at the cost of trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives.

The assembled Cabinet is fun to behold with very credible performances all around, though none could touch Thandie Newton's Condie Rice- the ultimate White House yes man in Lilly Tomlin drag!

There's so much material to cover, it's no surprise so much got left out (eg- Katrina, his National Guard service, the never ending myriad of Bushisms, 9/11, Abu Ghraib). Yes, there's still a more serious, in depth film to be made on this most superficial of American tragic characters. And it must start with the death of his beloved older sister in their preschool years, whose body was buried the very next day, never to be mentioned again- while the Bushes played golf at their country club, and little W pedaled his tricycle relentlessly about, forever lost.