If you've seen the trailer, you've basically already watched W. But this is an Oliver Stone film, after all, and you want to know the money shot, do you not? Here it is—proceed at very little risk: About halfway through, George W. Bush leads his pre-Iraq War advisers (Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld) through the Texas desert. Then he stops and everyone looks around, not sure what to do next. Are they searching for oil? WMDs? Osama Bin Laden? "I know it's around here somewhere," Bush tells everyone else. "Yup. There's the car!"

The movie is leaden with this kind of dramatic irony: Knowing the Bush presidency is a disaster, we're meant to find every passing detail funny or revealing in retrospect. Sometimes it's tragically hilarious; sometimes it's a little like getting a history lecture from Michael Moore. A speechwriter and the CIA pore over a line about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium, mistakenly keeping it in the State of the Union. Karl Rove says a war could help Bush get re-elected in 2004. Who knew?

There's no JFK-like conspiracy; instead, Stone tries to make sense of the man's psychology. In this case, Bush's origin story isn't so different from a recovering country rock star: He drinks roughly a bottle of Jack Daniel's for every hand of poker before finding God and a librarian to save him. Oh, and then he becomes president. Josh Brolin as Bush gamely milks sympathy from the accent and nervous tics—answering journalist John Dickerson's question about his biggest failure as president, he sounds like a man vexed by any kind of self-examination—but these behaviors go without explanation. The closest we get are Bush's existential ESPN dreams about catching a fly ball in the Rangers ballpark, suggesting a man not so much in crisis as fishing for a thought in his empty head.

Stone said his movie is "supposed to be a fair and true portrait." But maybe the problem is it's a little too true? The Bush story, still not over, doesn't need a straight retelling. Stone's barely fictional fantasy that Dubya calls dad "Poppy" and dreams of the outfield is too mundane. No one said you had to humanize the president, but at least throw him a coke party.