Metcalf's Screening Room: Oliver Stone's "W."

Bayside resident Mark Metcalf is an actor who has worked in movies, TV and on the stage. He is best known for his work in "Animal House," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Seinfeld."

In addition to his work on screen, Metcalf is involved with the Milwaukee International Film Festival, First Stage Children's Theater and a number of other projects.

He also finds time to write about movies for OnMilwaukee.com. This week, Metcalf weighs in on the new Oliver Stone movie "W."

W (In theaters now)

George W. Bush's presidency has been very disappointing to me and, if you believe the polls, the vast majority of the citizens of the United States. If you believe Oliver Stone, it has been a disappointment to Mr. Bush himself.

The final sequence of the new film "W.," leaves you feeling sorry for the poor, misguided fellow. Stone sets him up as a man who never grew out from under his father. Restless and unfocused from his early years, the only way he was able to concentrate on a project for any length of time was when he was motivated by rivalry with his brother, Jeb, for his father's serious approval. His father takes credit, perhaps correctly, for every major achievement in the son's life, as well as for baling him out of every major debacle. The only time he steps out of the way, purposely disengages from his son, is in George W. Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq.

At the end of the film, faced with the terrible failure of that war, W., or Geo, or Buddy, or whatever one of the fun nicknames his family and friends use for him, feels the same way he felt when he walked off the oil rig job and never came back because he was thirsty.

He feels failure.

By the end of the film, though, he has grown enough self-awareness to at least be unable to come up with an excuse, though he does, in Stone's version, cry out for his Father to fix it in a private emotional way.

That moment, that vulnerability, is what brings me to the point of sympathy for the man. I never thought I would have sympathy for George W. Bush. I am aware that I still don't. I have sympathy for the man that Josh Brolin and Oliver Stone have presented me with in the film "W." And because it is the only time in my knowledge that a major work has been offered with a sitting president as it's featured player, about his presidency, I will look at the man and the job he has done a little differently.

Stone offers us a poor fool, influenced by arrogant, elitist and entitled, unemotional, but very smart people with definite agendas. What he doesn't answer for me is, and it is the big question that I leave the film with, how did such a poor fool get elected President of the United States? Even though the first time was more of a selection by the Supreme Court than a perfectly clean election, how did it happen twice?

Is it as simple as what Karl Rove says to him on a bench in Texas when he is campaigning for the Governorship, as simple as the fact that the American people want to envision having a beer with their leaders?

Is the American voter so arrogant and insulated from the world that we would trust the guy sitting at the other end of the bar -- the guy who looks like us, orders the same whiskey as us, cries only with his wife, like us, has no trouble at all putting a sentence together as long as it doesn't deal with a big, complicated thought, like us someone who would rather be out hunting or working in the yard, like us -- are we that self involved that that is who we want as our leader?

Or, is it that we feel so insecure in our intellectual development, that we just don't feel very smart, so we are skeptical of anyone who easily displays intelligence? Are we afraid of being manipulated by people who are smarter than we are? How did that happen? Is it, "Fool me once...shame on you? Fool me twice, ..." (that's OK, W. in the movie can't finish it, either.)

I feel better about myself when my president doesn't know stuff that I don't know. That's the American dream: even a moron, as my ex-wife says I am, could become President.

It is such an even-handed depiction of it's subject that I almost wish for the old Oliver Stone. The one who would bring his own complicated agenda to the story the way he did in "JFK" or "Nixon." One critic said he felt Stone was reigning himself in, holding back. I tend to agree. There are places when the movie begins to play like a good "Saturday Night Live" sketch or something from "The Daily Show."

It's based on the truth, but it's lined up in such a way that it is very funny. Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice is funny all the way through. She has made a choice to use a voice that, as my son, Julius, said midway through the film, "cracks me up." But, just when there is that glimpse of life, of a solid point of view, it draws away and focuses on Richard Dreyfus as Dick Cheney, or "Vice," as the frat boy fool calls him, or on Karl Rove lurking in the dark corner of some room, and it becomes a serious-minded biopic posing as a docudrama.

The film has no pace and achieves very little rhythm. Josh Brolin is being celebrated for a wonderful performance and I see a good impersonation, but that doesn't make a performance. He doesn't connect with anyone; there is no chemistry, nothing heats up. All the actors seem to be acting in a vacuum surrounded only by themselves and our foreknowledge of their characters from the news. Only James Cromwell, as the first President Bush, is not doing an impersonation, seemingly making no attempt to sound like or to look like H.W. Ellen Burstyn, as Barbara Bush, brings a little passion to the part, and was revelatory to me at least about the woman's character.

The promotion of the film makes it seem as though it is going to be funny. It is in moments, but it can't sustain an honest emotion long enough to make a whole scene.

The stories abound about how Stone hurried to get the picture done so that it could be out before the election. One would presume that he felt he could influence the election. It is certainly within the realm of Stone's ego to think that he could push the vote one way or the other. Judging from his history, I would have thought he wanted to push it away from the Republican Party, but based on the film he has made, I think he must have enjoyed those Texas barbeques and he may miss the last eight years. I won't.