Bush's Brain
  • Studio: Tartan
  • Release Date: Aug 27, 2004
Metascore
48 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 22 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 22
  2. Mixed: 12 out of 22
  3. Negative: 4 out of 22
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  1. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    100
    A skeptical view of George W. Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, using argumentative strategies common to agenda-driven documentaries.
  2. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Curiel
    100
    The film is a damning look at a key Bush operative.
  3. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    75
    Potent if hardly evenhanded documentary.
  4. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    75
    One of the better political documentaries flooding into theaters after "Fahrenheit 9/11" and before the election.
  5. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Merle Bertrand
    70
    Full of enough legitimate red meat to incense salivating Democrats who can't wait to tear into a pound of Bush's flesh in November. Yet, this film should truly frighten partisans on both sides of the aisle.
  6. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    63
    In a refreshing change of pace, this week's anti-Bush documentary, Bush's Brain, is not really about George W. Bush at all. It's about his senior political adviser, Karl Rove.
  7. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ernest Hardy
    60
    A tad dry but never boring.
  8. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Kirk Honeycutt
    50
    The film leaves any opponent of the current administration with a discouraging ambivalence: On one hand, one wants to vehemently decry such tactics in American politics. On the other, one wants to know where the hell is the Democrats' Karl Rove?
  9. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    50
    The movie feels like a rush job and at times its tactics are as suspect as those attributed to its subject. But when it comes to political strategy trumping policy in the Bush White House, it makes its case.
  10. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    50
    The film basically follows Moore and Slater's book, but without the details that reveal the strange complexity of the Bush-Rove symbiosis.
  11. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    50
    I’m not sure that depicting Rove as a demonic Wizard of Oz does much more than stir righteous indignation among the already indignant. A more pertinent and challenging mission would have been to show just how the public can be gulled by Rove's dirty tricks in the same ways again and again.
  12. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    50
    The campaign's latest scare doc takes its title, Bush's Brain, and much of its argument from the portrait of political operative and bogeyman Karl Rove published last year by a pair of Dallas newsmen.
  13. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    50
    Only partially convincing.
  14. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    50
    Whether or not Bush's Brain makes its case against Mr. Rove, the movie leaves you with the sickening feeling that it's no longer possible in American politics to stay out of the gutter unless, of course, you want to lose. Dirty politics work.
  15. Variety
    Reviewed by: Joe Leydon
    50
    By turns darkly comical, seriously scary and purposefully incendiary, Bush's Brain may seem, depending on your politics, either a shamelessly one-sided assault on a popular U.S. president or a justifiably harsh critique of a politician who personifies the Peter Principle.
  16. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    40
    Constructed out of poorly supported accusations, vague innuendo, and naked emotional appeals, Bush's Brain has a Rove-esque quality of its own.
  17. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    40
    Introduces us to many who have known, worked and tangled with the man some call Bush's "co-president" during his multi-decade involvement in Republican politics.
  18. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    40
    They succeed in presenting a compelling series of dots, to use the current parlance, but they don't succeed in connecting them.
  19. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Allison Benedikt
    38
    Even if the movie's only goal is to preach to the choir, its fondness for hyperbole and lack of discernment is more insult than rallying cry.
  20. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Kimberley Jones
    30
    Clearly the film is archly trying to connect the dots between Rove and the supreme mishandling of Iraq – and a compelling case might be made – but it isn't made here.
  21. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: Robert Wilonsky
    30
    The movie, which feels as amateurish as a student film made for cable access, doesn't deliver the goods; the gotcha moment never comes.
  22. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    20
    Distributors are clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel with this flimsy exposé of presidential adviser Karl Rove.

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