After watching W., I left the theater in a daze, wondering why it had been made. It’s not funny enough to be satire, nor deep enough to be drama, not informative enough to be a documentary. It feels empty, a vehicle bumping along trying to get its bearings, and directed by someone without opinions. It’s hard to believe that someone’s name is Oliver Stone. Whatever Stone’s faults, we’ve usually been able to depend on him to be scrappy and opinionated. Perhaps his decline began with Alexander, which also seemed to lack focus.

W. begins in 2003, during a meeting in which George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) comes up with his infamous "Axis of Evil" signature phrase. We then flash back to Dubya’s early days, when he was a hard-drinking, womanizing frat boy and an embarrassment to his father, George H. W. Bush (James Cromwell). Dubya meets his future wife, Laura Welch (Elizabeth Banks), and, eventually, Karl Rove (Toby Banks), who guides him to victory in his attempt to be elected Governor of Texas. We flash forward to and back from the 2000s throughout all this, mostly to build up to Bush’s decision to invade Iraq.

Enough is omitted to constitute another movie. Did it hit the cutting-room floor? Bush’s relationship with Rove is implied but never explored, there’s nothing about his perceived leadership following 9/11, nothing about his two difficult and contested national-election wins, nothing about his delayed reaction to the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Most important, there’s nothing about the millions of lives Bush has affected. W. sometimes seems like a stage play in which we hear about things taking place offstage that remain offstage. Only in a scene in which Bush visits two soldiers who have returned wounded from Iraq do we see any effects of his actions.

The crux of Stone’s movie is that Dubya is a reformed alcoholic (though later scenes show him drinking O’Doul’s; ask any 12-step program member the truth about that) who found God and then, when elected President of the United States, found himself over his head, manipulated and genuinely clueless. Perhaps it was because Bush felt he could never be as good as his father wanted him to be. That’s certainly implied in W.; I’m just not sure the implication required a two-hour movie.

The performances are, well, odd -- it’s tremendously difficult to offer portrayals of living celebrities seen every day on TV. Josh Brolin succeeds as Bush, in an earnest, heartfelt turn that is as nuanced as the script will allow. Richard Dreyfuss is his equal as Vice-President Dick Cheney. The two women in Bush’s life, his wife and his mother, Barbara (Ellen Burstyn), are dutifully portrayed without malice or artifice. Colin Powell is acted tongue-in-cheek by Jeffrey Wright, while Condoleeza Rice is portrayed with broad satire by Thandie Newton. You have to hear her voice to believe it. One of the best acting jobs is by veteran Stacy Keach as Rev. Earle Hudd; Keach strikes just the right balance between sincerity and generic satire.

I wanted to like this movie, but I can’t. It’s too big a mess for even a mother -- or a father -- to love. If you were around when all of these events happened, then you don’t need to be here.

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