What I've Watched: W.

It's not that W. was a bad movie. Yes, I spent the first 30 minutes (and intermittently the rest of the way) through the film with my head in my hands, wondering for the 3 bagillionth time how Americans could have elected this numbskull to the office of president. Granted, this was a pseudo-fictionalized version of his life story, but it damn sure felt real when watching it.

No, the problem with this movie is that the actors playing the real-life people were too known. Maybe it's that I live in DC, where you cannot escape politics no matter where you are. I've just become over-familiar with their faces and their tendencies. I just couldn't focus enough on the dialogue and the pacing without staring at the screen thinking, "Jeffrey Wright does a real good Colin Powell, but he's Jeffrey Wright. He was Basquiet!" Same with Richard Dreyfuss as Cheney, Scott Glenn as Rummy, James Cromwell as Pappa Bush, Elizabeth Banks as Laura. I know the real people too well after 8 years and 9 bagillion fuckups. I just couldn't separate the actors from who they were playing and just enjoy the movie.

The lone exception was Thandie Newton playing Condi Rice. She was so perfect I thought Condi had actually agreed (oddly) to be in the movie. She was perfect, and that was what the movie needed: less starpower, and more people who truly fell into the roles and disappeared. If W would have come across as a documentary and less like the Hollywood film it was, I think I would have gotten more out of it.

Though I may have just spent more time with my head in my hands.