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Metascore
56 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 36 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 14 out of 36
  2. Mixed: 21 out of 36
  3. Negative: 1 out of 36
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  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    100
    W., a biography of President Bush, is fascinating. No other word for it.
  2. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    88
    You'll be disappointed if you expect famed leftist Oliver Stone to apply a coup de grace to this man.
  3. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    83
    Seems a much more even-handed and thoughtful take on the man than anyone might have expected.
  4. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Joe Neumaier
    80
    A measured and thoughtful meditation on a leader who, this terrific movie believes, inadvertently made the world as roiling as his soul.
  5. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    80
    The pleasure of Mr. Stone's work has never been located in restraint but in excess, a commitment to extremes that can drown out the world or, as in this film, give it newly vivid, hilarious and horrible form.
  6. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    75
    In the end it depicts its subject as lost, and pitiable--like Richard Nixon, but more a pawn than a dark knight.
  7. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    75
    An often compelling, tragicomic psychological analysis of Dubya, viewed through the prism of his relationship with an allegedly disapproving father.
  8. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    75
    In the end, W. makes up in immediacy what it lacks in objectivity.
  9. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    75
    The performances are good (some scarily realistic), and the movie is enjoyable to watch. But as a probing analysis of the 43rd president, it falls short.
  10. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    70
    W. is not a dispassionate biography; it is an interpretation of personality intersecting with history, and as a piece of drama it is persuasive and perfectly creditable.
  11. Slate
    Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    70
    Like Tina Fey's Sarah Palin, Stone's George Bush gets his best lines straight from the source.
  12. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    63
    Whatever you think of Dubya, he has balls. The movie doesn't.
  13. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    63
    Passably interesting, occasionally riveting and largely superfluous. But it's certainly a worthwhile curiosity, and it's not what anyone expected. At the movies these days, that alone is worth something.
  14. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    63
    When it works, W. can take your breath away. When it doesn't, you can feel Stone still working out his feelings toward the man.
  15. NPR
    Reviewed by: Bob Mondello
    60
    A surprisingly unsurprising film.
  16. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Don R. Lewis
    60
    W. is the kind of film that demands discussion and only then can we start to decipher what Stone's intentions are towards our President.
  17. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    60
    It's when Stone engages in shameless editorializing -- when he lets his freak-flag point of view fly, rather than tempering it -- that W. is most entertaining and most vital. The rest of the time it feels too much like awards bait: stiff, arch and knowing.
  18. Newsweek
    Reviewed by: David Ansen
    60
    Like all Stone movies, W. has energy and forward momentum--particularly in the pre-presidential sections, when Bush is in his loose-cannon phase. It's not boring, and Brolin is often remarkable.
  19. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    58
    The intrepid one is the outstanding Josh Brolin, who does such a phenomenal job in the title role that he carries every scene he's in to a place of subtlety and integrity far beyond what Stone needs to make his attention-grabbing noise.
  20. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    58
    Stone paddles down the giant river of Bush's life without exploring any of the tributaries; he passes by two or three dozen better movies along the way.
  21. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Kirk Honeycutt
    50
    It's a gutsy movie but not necessarily a good one. Its greatest strength is that it wants to talk about what's on our minds right now and not wait for historians.
  22. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    50
    Unlike the filmmaker's previous stabs at presidential biopic-ing and conspiracy theorizing - "JFK" and "Nixon" - this one doesn't have the luxury of historical perspective.
  23. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    50
    Superficial, uninformative, and inert, this two hour snoozefest isn't even inflammatory enough to stoke a righteous anti-Bush brushfire. W. does for recent history what Oliver Stone's epic "Alexander" did for ancient times.
  24. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    50
    None of it is new, nor is the recycled stuff presented in a newly revealing context.
  25. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Josh Rosenblatt
    50
    In our age of 24-hour news coverage, this rehashing of current events doesn't just come off familiar but completely unnecessary. And, worst of all, prosaic.
  26. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    50
    For a film that could have been either a scorching satire or an outright tragedy, W. is, if anything, overly conventional, especially stylistically.
  27. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    50
    In spite of Josh Brolin's heroic efforts, W. is a skin-deep biopic that revels in its antic shallowness.
  28. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    50
    It's most entertaining for its stunt casting of movie stars as the president's family and advisers.
  29. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    42
    Stone may think he's made a movie about the toxicity of the Bush presidency, but what we have instead is a cautionary tale of a decidedly lower order. As far as I can make out, the real message of W. is: Don't vote for anybody who talks with his mouth full of food.
  30. Empire
    Reviewed by: Helen O'Hara
    40
    Disappointing. Stone whipped this out in time for the US Presidential election, but it's hard to see how it'll make any significant impact on voters. Or why it even should.
  31. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    40
    W. isn't gripping enough as drama or witty enough as satire. It's neutered.
  32. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    40
    A painful movie to endure.
  33. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    40
    The movie is an X-ray of an invisible man -- by the film's end, the W. still stands for Who?
  34. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    40
    Why this movie -- a rushed, wildly uneven, tonally jumbled caricature -- and why now?
  35. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: David Denby
    40
    Richard Dreyfuss, hunching over and baring his teeth like a shark cruising off a Martha's Vineyard beach, does a wicked impersonation of Cheney. His relish for the part suggests that the movie should have been done not as an earnest bio-pic but as a satirical comedy -- as a contemporary "Dr. Strangelove," with a cast of satyrs and clowns.
  36. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    38
    The movie plays like a dunk-the-clown game at a carnival. Through intent or ineptitude, he sets up the Bush family and administrations as caricatures.
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User Reviews

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User Score
4.8 out of 10

Mixed or average reviews- based on 79 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 36
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 36
  3. Negative: 17 out of 36
  1. TopiasI
    1
    Horrible. at least when ur not from USA. cant say good things about this movie.
  2. BenN.
    7
    I went into this movie expecting to see a leftist bashing of Bush but that's just not what happened, it was a surprisingly fair film from Oliver Stone. It wasn't fair and balanced by any means but it was center-left perspective instead of the expected far-left perspective. Oliver Stone Portrays The President as an average Joe of average intellegence who constantly tried, and failed in his W's mind, to live up to his father's expectations. The most surprising thing was Stone's protrayal of Bush's decisions on Iraq, in that it was the intellegence system betraying Bush instead of Bush just trying to one up his dad as most leftists believe. Though the film doesn't protray any of Bushes successes in offic, it critiques his mistakes in a way that is fair to the man who wasn't a bad president in general, just not one of our best. A a centrist myself I see this film as a fair representation of the man an encourage everyone who believes Bush is Evil to see it to get a lesson on the truth: that he was just an under-qualified man doing the best he could. In fact the one man Stone actually portrays as evil in the film is Dick Cheney, answering Powells questions on Iraq by saying, "There is no Exit Stragety, We Stay" The Clif-Hanger style endind will ruin the movie for you but you will still enjoy it for the most part, if you keep an open mind on Bush.… Full Review »
  3. BurtB
    1
    Terrible! Not factual, but I couldn't discern a motive for why they fictionalized the story like they did. Don't waste your time.
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