When Sarah Palin first appeared on the national political stage, she struck me as someone straight out of a reality show or a Disney movie. She had such cartoonish and folksy charm that made her believe so strongly in the backwards, extreme right wing rhetoric she stumbled over that she couldn’t have possibly whined her way into the spotlight.
The HBO film “Game Change” is unkind to Palin, painting her as a teenage brat while confirming little more than I already suspected about the 2008 campaign.
It’s a movie that doesn’t provide behind the scenes insight as it does re-enact the story from an insider perspective. McCain is losing the election, he needs a bold move, and they take a chance on a nobody without properly vetting her. Palin (Julianne Moore) proves to be an incompetent nutcase, she goes rogue, they lose the election, and everyone responsible smacks their heads in embarrassment. End of story.
What we see of McCain (Ed Harris) and his campaign advisor Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson) are little more than reaction shots. “Game Change” is filled with sound bytes of McCain’s team saying, “She’s doing great!” or “Oh god!” This much seems obvious. It has nothing new to add, no contrarian viewpoint of people defending her or calling her bluff.
Its other perspective comes from waves of news clips that draw out that endless campaign all over again. Director Jay Roach uses these clips haphazardly. If Schmidt is seen saying, “Don’t let this leak,” you can bet the next image is a clip of a broadcaster saying, “A member of McCain’s campaign team leaked it.” There’s another moment when Palin looks right in the eye of her speech writer and says, “Change it,” only for CNN to immediately recite the identical statement.
I’d like to see a docudrama like this try and completely avoid using real life news clips or rehashes of the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler SNL sketches. “Game Change” uses them so liberally, it’s all too linear.
“Game Change’s” view of Palin is reductive and one-dimensional. She comes across as a bitchy, picky tween. She pouts and gives the cold shoulder while texting and complains that she only cares about Alaska. She’s an egotistical, hateful, stubborn attention freak and is the only character ever really at fault. She’s the villain where McCain is absent and everyone else is hard-nosed and intelligent but regretful of the monster they’ve unleashed.
At the end of the day, “Game Change” only asks “What if?” I have no more desire to be kind to Palin than this movie does, but I’d rather it be fair and informative so I can really decide whether we did in fact dodge a bullet.
2 ½ stars