‘W.’ - Stone misunderestimates Dubya

W.” is precisely the film advertised in the trailers. Silly. Superficial. Clearly beneath Oliver Stone’s best work.

It’s also a foolish attempt to rewrite history on the fly. If “W.” looks small now, it’s likely to shrink even more as time marches on.

Stone’s latest tracks the curious rise of frat-boy George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) to the highest office in the land. It’s not mean enough to curry favor with the rabid left, and it’s too disrespectful to engage the right.

Undecided voters may be briefly swayed, but the laborious final scenes will capsize “W.’s” approval ratings.

The film attempts a chronological re-enactment of Bush’s life, although it frequently breaks format to visit Bush in the Oval Office.

We see W the fratboy getting hazed, the film unwisely letting the 40-year-old Brolin play the teen Bush. He’s the oldest looking freshman since Rodney Dangerfield went “Back to School.”

The young Bush can’t get much right with his life. He flits from job to job, drinks to excess and clashes frequently with his father, future President George H.W. Bush (James Cromwell, who doesn’t resemble Bush the elder in any capacity).

Bush’s salvation comes from two fronts. He meets a sweetheart of a gal in Laura Welch (Elizabeth Banks, given too little to do) and finds religion. Both events are treated fairly by Stone, and the first meeting between W and his future bride is easily the film’s best sequence. Stone drops his agenda, leaving two professionals to do their job.

Bush’s political transformation is overseen by Karl Rove (Toby Jones), who pulls his strings and leverages the Bush name to fuel his ascent.

“W.’s” war room scenes provide the biggest (unintentional) laughs. It’s a pastiche of far-left talking points, from the vicious Vice President Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss) to the stoic Gen. Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright).

The critical chorus is crying “W.” is a fair, even sympathetic, look at the current president. Don’t believe them. Sure, the film doesn’t have Bush kicking nuns or chortling while soldiers are dying overseas, but it paints him as a war monger with little sympathy for the lives lost in Iraq.

The film doesn’t miss a chance to mock Bush. That’s apparent when Stone squeezes in the moment when Bush chokes on a pretzel while watching television.

Brolin’s Bush chews with his mouth open, fumbles when he isn’t bumbling and can barely put together a coherent thought. And every malapropism from the last seven-plus years is squeezed into the screenplay.

Stone hinges his narrative on a father-son dynamic which drove an unqualified man to seek the country’s highest office. It’s a deeply unserious assessment of a complicated man. Stone clearly has zero curiosity about the real George W. Bush. He feels far more comfortable throwing darts within his ideological shelter, pinning his entire story on cheap psychology and fractured facts.

“W.” overstays its welcome as it distorts the signature decision of Bush’s presidency, the call to go to war with Iraq.

Years from now, historians will have the final say in whether that decision was the right or wrong way to combat global terrorism.

It’s safe to say honest film historians don’t need to wait another minute before ruling on Stone’s “W.”

(Photo: Josh Brolin plays President George W. Bush to Elizabeth Banks’ Laura Bush in “W.” Photo credit: Sidney Ray Baldwin)

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