Game Change

Both amazing and terrifying
"Game Change" is an awesome movie about the McCain/Palin campaign. The film doesn't portray McCain in a bad light at all, and really focuses on what a complete imbecile Sarah Palin (played with Tina Fey-like precision by Julianne Moore) is. I really hope that some of the things in the film are exaggerations, because if Palin really is this much of a moron (and yes, it gets much worse than her claiming that she can see Russia from her house), then I am even more terrified of what this country has come to than I ever was before. In some ways, although the film definitely paints a picture of Palin as being an ignorant (and perhaps even mentally unstable) woman who is absolutely 100% unqualified to hold a government job of any kind, "Game Change" also shifts a lot of the blame on McCain's campaign advisors, who suggested Palin for the VP slot without ever doing their homework on her. Yes, she had no business being associated with that campaign in any way, but the real blame falls with the...

Review: 'Game Change'
Released almost a year to the day after Barack Obama took his place as President of the United States, Game Change landed into the political soccer field with a wallop, and quickly became the talk of the DC insider circuit. Written by Mark Halperin and John Heileman, the gossipy tell-all proved to be the final escape hatch for a lot of supposed experts who saw their careers waylaid by piss poor decisions, leading to a level of backstabbing and leaked information that was virtually unprecedented. It made for an entertaining read, like skimming through the National Enquirer while in a check-out line. And much like those scandalous rags with their silly celebrity headlines, most of what was inside turned out to be true, despite all the protestations by those the book would highlight.

Game Change was pretty even handed in it's dirt digging, exposing some ugly facts about Hilary Clinton's 2008 campaign as well as the bedroom shenanigans of John Edwards. For HBO's new film...

Anchored
More than anything, "Game Change" is a character study; the character in this case being Sarah Palin. The film portrays her as a complicated, powerful woman who was suddenly thrust into the international political spotlight, then forced to deal with all of the pressure, scrutiny, adoration, criticism, and condemnation that followed.

"Game Change" will probably not please many people, at least from a political point of view. People who despise Sarah Palin will probably think the film is too sympathetic towards her, as she is portrayed as a devoted mother and wife, as a charismatic public figure with the ability to connect with people in a way that few politicians do, and as a person genuinely committed to her Christian faith. At the same time, those who love Sarah Palin will probably think the film portrays her too harshly, showing her as not terribly intelligent, combative, naive, and narcissistic. In a way, the film's greatest strength is also its weakness - it portrays a...

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