[img]7|left|||no_popup[/img]Lampooning the George W. Bush presidency can feel a lot like taking shots at the broadside of a barn. The former President’s inarticulate expression and body language struck some as folksy and others as just plain goofy – few politicians were so ready-made for cartooning. And that, of course, is even before controversial policies that left the body politic divided against itself, a situation ripe for sharp-tongued, poison-pen satire.

 “W The Movie,” then, is surreal vaudeville of face-painted characters that plays like a greatest hits compilation from the Bush years: the dubious 2000 election, the war in Iraq, the bungled (some would say cynical) response to Hurricane Katrina, and autocratic tendencies. This is not the film to turn to for dissection or introspection, or even subversion, given its post-Bush release. Relying on the audience to be suitably informed and outraged about former President Bush, “W The Movie” is an old-fashioned rant aimed to round up the sympathetic to simultaneously wind them up and talk them down from the ledge. Familiarity, however, eventually breeds tediousness. Whether it’s worth dragging in the wheezy notion of catharsis depends entirely on the extent to which the survival guilt embodied in the Obama Presidency is activist in nature or persuaded by calls to “look to the future.” 

Entertaining for Both Sides?

So if doesn’t do more than spit venom, content with pushing the right buttons but stopping short of directing residual anger towards anything, “W The Movie” can’t be accused of being timid. This is no boxer that aims to fix the fight by going down for the sake of keeping blood off the mat. It’s a quirky piece of political theatre that aims to entertain while servicing the choir. From co/writer-director Alfred Eaker himself to a cast that includes the intriguingly monikored Pink Freud, the film is populated by outré, no-holds-barred personas including the apocalyptic Mr. Bush, who emerges from an alien spaceship that crashes into the Arizona desert, and indie journalist BlueMahler, whose struggles against Bush (in what could be a philosophical capitulation) venture beyond the grave.

Forget dream logic and acid trip analogies: this is gonzo bizarre cinema that employs visual effects from fifteen years ago with great gusto and artistic exuberance and molds it all into surprising coherence of vision. Surrealism, it seems, isn’t dead after all, even if it dips a little too often into the gimmickry that even Grandmaster Bunuel was prone to rather than the trance-like ambiguity of a David Lynch film or Jim Jarmush’s Dead Man. But Eaker and crew make the whole affair funny and sharp; a mostly hypnotic experience that must be taken for what it is in whole or set aside altogether.

Entertainment: Pink
Craft: Blue

‘W The Movie.’ Written by Alfred Eaker, Wendy Collin Sorin, and Ross St. Just. Directed by Alfred Eaker and Ross St. Just. Starring Alfred Eaker, Pink Freud, Ross St. Just, John M. Bennet, Justin Barnes and Lauren Paige. 95 minutes. www.wthemovie.com

Frédérik invites you to discuss “W The Movie” at his blog.