THEATER REVIEW
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No Misunderestimating Ferrell as Dubya
By W. McCahill
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Posted Feb 6, 09 1:05 PM CST
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(Newser)
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It’s not quite a landslide, but critics mainly agree that Will Ferrell gets his mission accomplished in lampooning the 43rd president with his Broadway show, You’re Welcome America. A Final Night With George W. Bush. Though Saturday Night Live viewers will see the “retread” in Ferrell’s “loopy extrapolation” on Bush, Ben Brantley writes in the New York Times, “the show feels freshest when he goes off on surreal tangents that transport his blundering hero into the ether of pure absurdism.”
Joe Dziemianowicz, in the Daily News, found the spontaneous, ad-lib interactions with audience the best part, if quite “unlike Dubya.” David Rooney, in Variety, singles out a “gut-busting recollection of walking in on Dick Cheney in the White House basement in an intimate act with a goat-devil.” Elysa Gardner, for one, begs to differ: “References to race, religion, ethnicity, and lifestyle … aim to shock and amuse and do neither,” she writes in USA Today. “Ferrell’s mission ought to have been aborted.”