Only a couple months ago, President George Bush was the biggest goof America had on its radar. Lovely, innocent times those were, before Sarah Palin came down from Alaska and gosh darnnit if she didn't just steal folks' hearts with her colloquial syntax and adorable doodles.

Back then, when the first trailer for Oliver Stone's biopic (is that what it is?) on our fearless leader hit the screens and the blogs, everyone was pissed. Conservatives were mad that W. made George Bush look like an alcoholic fratboy who got the presidency through nepotism, and the liberals were pissed because having a detrimental picture come out so close to election time would give the right something to rally against. So, everyone loses? Especially Josh Brolin, who got so into caricature as Jr. that he was arrested in Shreveport for bar fighting.

But in a twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan, the first reviews are in, and it looks like W isn't the usual heavy-handed Stone affair that people were afraid of. In fact, it could have done with some more liberal interpretation:

For a film that could have been either a scorching satire or an outright tragedy, "W." is, if anything, overly conventional, especially stylistically. The picture possesses dramatic and entertainment value, but beyond serious filmgoers curious about how Stone deals with all this president's men and women, it's questionable how wide a public will pony up to immerse itself in a story that still lacks an ending."

Final analysis: Can't wait to see what Stone does with the Sarah Palin story. Maybe he'll go the Matt Damon route and Disney-fy her rise to success.