I had no idea what I was expecting of "W." before I saw it this past weekend.

Director Oliver Stone's involvement suggested the film would attempt to assassinate the character of President George W. Bush in controversial fashion. Yet a prime talking point of early reviews was Stone's leniency toward Bush, the colossal administrative mistakes he made, his folksy manner and his ambition to do little more than drink beer and watch sports on TV.

Stone's involvement also suggested "W." would hold a serious and psychologically weighty lens over Bush's life and presidency. Yet trailers sent mixed messages; many climaxed with a zooming shot of a despondent Bush (played by Josh Brolin) screaming in solitude, and others conveyed a more comedic air about the biographical movie.

That last impression of "W." was the one that ultimately prevailed: It's a sitcom. Brolin recites many of Bush's more well-known verbal follies ("is our children learning?", "fool me once...") out of context, but no less comically. The actor impeccably channels Will Ferrell channeling Bush in portraying a drunken Texan buffoon in the bulk of the scenes that take place prior to Bush's sobriety.

Most of those laughs were responses to the meat of the movie: The "war room" scenes between Bush and the high-ranking members of his administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss) and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (Thandie Newton). When they discuss how to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials' dialogue betrays "W.'s" left-handed origins.

As repulsive as one might find Cheney's war-mongering and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's ignorance, it is hard to believe Bush or any of his colleagues spoke with such brusque and absurdly unreasonable language about U.S. military strategy. But before the gravity of these words sets in fully, Brolin swoops in to lighten it with comic relief in the form of word butchery and plain stupidity.

Stone still manages to plant in "W." some of the headier content expected by anyone familiar with his work. Scenes from Bush's life are broken up by a straightforward recurring dream of him in an empty ballpark, and frequent clashes with his father, George H.W. Bush, suggest that sibling competition with the younger Jeb spurred W.'s political career along. Our current president comes off like a pawn to not only this competition and his father's withheld acceptance, but also to Cheney and even Born Again Christianity. And when W.'s not a pawn, he's a joke.