All he wanted to do was watch baseball and drink beer all day. Sounds like a reasonable request.

Instead, George W. Bush ended up being chosen as leader of the free world. Twice.

That's Oliver Stone's surprisingly fair and balanced assessment of the president, who truly needs no further parodying, in "W."

From the earliest announcements about the film, it seemed inevitable what we'd be in for: an evisceration. Instead, Stone has come up with a rather conventional biopic, albeit one about a person whose decisions have affected the entire planet for the past eight years.

We see young Dubya as a drunk fraternity pledge at Yale University; as a swaggering party boy meeting Laura Welch, the woman who would become his wife and his rock, at a backyard barbecue; and as a reluctant worker in the West Texas oil fields, where he asks in twangy Spanish before noon, "Donde esta la cerveza?" — "Where is the beer?"

He runs for Congress and loses, runs for Texas governor and wins, loses the booze and finds the Lord. All well-documented stuff. (And among Bush's greatest hits, we get treated to flubs including, "Is our children learning?" "misunderestimated" and his famous botching of the phrase "fool me once, shame on you.")

As Bush himself, Josh Brolin certainly gets the innate humor within the frequent buffoonery — and he's got the voice and the demeanor down pat — but he also seems to recognize the tragedy of this figure, a man who was in way over his head for one of the world's most complicated jobs.

Brolin's so good, he almost makes us feel sorry for Bush. Almost. But then you remember the many deadly consequences of Bush's more questionable executive decisions. Again, though, Stone depicts going to war in Iraq as a wave Bush got caught up in, one that originated with Vice President Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss) and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (Scott Glenn), men to whom he deferred for wisdom.

Dreyfuss has perfected the look and the cadence of the real-life person he plays, but he never strays into "Saturday Night Live" territory. On the flip side is Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice, who is a complete caricature, right down to the gap between her teeth.

Surprisingly, Toby Jones doesn't get much to chew on considering that he plays longtime adviser Karl Rove. Elizabeth Banks brings the requisite ladylike sweetness to the role of Laura Bush, but she doesn't have a whole lot to do, either, besides provide steadfast support.

James Cromwell, however, is perfect as George H.W. Bush. He's not doing a dead-on impression, there are no Dana Carvey-style "thousand points of lights." He seems to get the dignity, patience and elegance that define the man.

That's partly what makes the climactic dream sequence — a surreal showdown between Poppy and Dubya in the Oval Office — such a letdown. It comes out of nowhere. It seems uncharacteristic, when Stone had been playing it pretty straight all along.

Not that it really matters. "W." will change no one's mind. If you thought Bush was an idiot going into the movie, you'll continue to think so; if you were a fan of his, you'll think this is a hatchet job (then again, you probably won't be bothering to see it anyway.