Game Change: Fair to Palin or an offensive cartoon?

HBO's hotly anticipated TV movie about the tumultuous rise and fall of the 2008 McCain-Palin ticket debuts this weekend. Critics weigh in on how it treats Mama Grizzly

Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin
(Image credit: HBO/Phillip V. Caruso)

Game Change, the buzzy TV movie premiering Saturday night on HBO, may be racking up strong critical notices, but a certain former Alaska governor is unlikely to tune in. The film is based on John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's 2010 bestseller about the 2008 presidential race, zeroing in on the chapters devoted to John McCain's hasty decision to add Sarah Palin to his ticket and the crash-and-burn fate that befell the duo, played by Ed Harris and Julianne Moore. (Watch the trailer below.) Palin herself maintains she won't see the film, blasting it as "Hollywood lies." And while her PAC is urging HBO to run a "fiction disclaimer" before it airs, HBO and director Jay Roach have declined, noting that they've confirmed the film's accuracy with 25 additional sources not interviewed for the book. Is Game Change's portrayal of Sarah Palin fair and accurate?

You betcha: Game Change "is entertaining and commendable precisely because it stays so close to the facts," says David Bianculli at NPR, nowhere more so than in its humanizing and "balanced" portrayal of the larger-than-life Sarah Palin . She's empathetically depicted as a mom from Alaska who was torn from her family and thrown into the political rat race. We see her react to the pressure, as "she pushes back, or shuts down — and the underlying tone of those scenes, on both sides, is frustration."

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