By Brendan McLaughlin

Some movies are required viewing for me strictly by virtue of the director. Speilberg, Tarantino, Lee, Scorcese.  They've all made stinkers, but you dare not miss them. That's what got me to Channelside this weekend to see Oliver Stone's puzzling biopic, "W." .   The film's central premise is that George W. Bush's blundering presidency was the result of simplemindedness and a deep sense of inadequacy in the eyes of his father, Bush 41.

The premise of the movie isn't its weakness. It's the execution, specifically  Stone's decision to take everything we know about Bush through his speeches and press conferences and work them into long passages of dialogue.  Bush may have had daddy issues, but does anybody believe that he actually said,  "I'll never get out of Poppy's shadow!"?  The script is so obtuse and wordy that the movie seems more like a phony transcript than a drama. Everybody's saying exactly what they've done, what they're thinking and what they're going to do. Even a documentary would have been less obvious in telegraphing motivation and intent.

The characterizations of the Cabinet from the cartoonish Condoleezza to the nutty Rumsfeld are fun to watch, but not enough to carry you through the nearly two hour running time. Plus, movies about events you're intimately familiar with always seem long unless there are dramatic surprises to break up the predictable path. None here.

I suspect most people queueing up to see "W." are expecting a mocking depiction of their least favorite President's foibles and failures. Oliver Stone's treatment is much more sympathetic, but ultimately, unbelievable.