In “W.,” Oliver Stone again pairs up with writer Stanley Weiser, with whom he co-wrote 1987’s “Wall Street.” If Stone and Weiser took anything from their previous work, it was the moment where protagonist Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) asks the sinister Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) why he needs to raid Bluestar, the scrappy airline Fox’s dad works for. “Because it’s WRECKABLE, all right?” Gekko responds.This time, Stone and Weiser never get near that kind of moment of truth, preferring a story as clunky and dumbly explanatory as a middle-school play with dialog like: “Your father is running for president!” and, from Tony Blair later on, “The inspectors haven’t found anything yet. How can we justify a pre-emptive war?”The cutesiness is as out of place as an impromptu “Heart and Soul” jam on the piano during a wake. “Yellow Rose of Texas” tinkles over scenes like cabinet discussions on what to call the “axis of evil” (Karl Rove, just adorably, suggests “Axis of Weasels”). Bush’s big born-to-lead moment comes during a Yale hazing, when, suffering the effects of a Jack Daniels whiskey-boarding, he can amazingly remember the idiotic nicknames of all his brothers.The arugula-nibbling, latte-sipping, canvas bag users were all atwitter in 2008 when Stone’s “W.” was announced. Stone, after all, channeled Ron Kovic’s tale of being burned by his country after returning from Vietnam in “Born on the Fourth of July.” Stone shook up the one-bullet-caused-seven-wounds theory, the “mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma,” of the Kennedy assassination, in “JFK,” and took on Nixon several years later in the film of the same name. How upset they must have been to have seen their anti-war efforts reduced to the ultimate cliché scene of people with picket signs as “Spirit in the Sky” plays in the background.Sadly, the spunkiest bit of dialog is Bush grumbling, “I’d love to stuff some freedom fries down that frog’s throat” after getting off the phone with France.Expecting this diaper of a dynasty to be hung out to dry — for clearing both brush and homosexual Arabic linguists from the military (ones who might have been able to translate the messages sent out Sept. 10, 2001, warning, “tomorrow is zero hour”), for treating the Constitution like a discarded peanut shell in a suitably phony Texas steak house, for endorsing torture, shrugging as New Orleans drowned and pouring blood and money into occupying a country no less vile than Zimbabwe, North Korea, Burma and Sudan?Nope. The whole thing’s as long and flat as the drive from Bovina to El Campo.”My dream is to see peace break out across the Middle East,” W. murmurs to his cabinet, as the old-timey song “Robin Hood” stirs up behind them. He tells a girlfriend he’s “happy as a rabbit in a carrot patch” with her — not the kind of language a born-and-raised Texan would ever use in a bar.All Bush ever wanted, Stone and Weiser say, is just the feeling of victory one gets standing in the middle of a baseball field. He just wanted a chance at the bat. How could anyone begrudge him that American dream?This isn’t even kid glove treatment — it’s angora. Maybe the electric-car drivers should have just looked at the German title before wasting their time watching the movie — or the Republicans before blasting it. In Germany, “W.” is titled “A misunderstood life.” “Triumph of the Will,” of course, was already taken.

Ashley O’Dell reviews movies that aren’t in theaters anymore.