The Game Change

I'm in a very political mood. And since my political blog has never been able to really get off the ground the same way this one has, I've decided to put that interest in watching a lot of political films and TV shows. I watched this and the first season of House of Cards. I'm hoping to get a review up for the first season soon. However,  I have made that promise before and I don't want to get your hopes up too much. However, House of Cards is my next project.

The Game Change is an HBO film based on the 2008 election, mainly on the campaign of John McCain.

McCain is played by Ed Harris and his campaign is struggling. He brings on Steve Schmidt (played by Woody Harrelson) to help organize his campaign and help him win the Republican nomination.

The cool thing with this movie is that they really paint John McCain as a stand up guy. The relationship between him and Steve Schmidt is done pretty well as you can definitely tell that Schmidt respects John McCain and they both want to have a clean campaign.

That strategy works and McCain gets the nomination. However, Schmidt and McCain find themselves in a difficult position when they find themselves campaigning against Barrack Obama. They need a bold move to set themselves apart and they decide that that decision comes with who they will choose as McCain's running mate.

And if you know anything about the 2008 election, you know exactly who they end up choosing.

They end up choosing the unknown governor of Alaska, Governor Sarah Palin (played by Julianne Moore). They see it as a bold game changer, making the unprecedented choice of bringing in a woman Vice Presidential nominee.

When Schmidt brings on the Governor, he and the campaign staff, including John McCain are easily smitten with her. However, they soon realize that it might not have been the smartest choice.

I really like how they initially set up the character of Sarah Palin.

At first, they set her up as a clueless moron. The legitimately need to sit her down and give her a history lesson on basic foreign policy. Furthermore, they figure out she is a good actress but a horrible choice for Vice President. She gives horrible interviews but she is an excellent campaigner, appealing to a larger audience of Republican voters.

The majority of the movie is Schmidt trying his best to get Sarah Palin to be a viable Vice Presidential candidate. Furthermore a good portion of the movie is Palin going through a series of mental break downs as she finds herself unprepared and incredibly unqualified for the position of Vice President.

And while its easy to say, especially if you are a staunch liberal and not a fan of Sarah Palin, the film does a pretty good job at making her a character you can sympathize with, even though you know she is a little bit unstable and has staunchly conservative views.

There are parts where Julianne Moore does a really good performance and you feel bad for this character because she is obviously going through something that nobody would want to go through in their right mind.

However, the movie also is not afraid to point out the insanity of this character and how she could be considered unstable.

Now I don't know how much of this is based on fact, how much of it is based in fiction but regardless, it makes for an interesting story, especially if you are interested in politics, and especially if you are interested in the story of Sarah Palin.

I find it interesting that they would make a movie based off something that is still pretty fresh in our memories, especially since Sarah Palin and all her family portrayed in the movie are still alive.

As far as performances go, I already mentioned Moore as Sarah Palin. And while I don't like her as much as Tina Fey in SNL sketches, I think she does a pretty good job, especially with an attempt to humanize her.

Ed Harris does a good job as John McCain and I think I like pretty much everything Woody Harrelson is in these days so overall the cast is pretty good.

Now what I will say as far as performances go is that some of the lines in the movie are delivered kind of poorly and overly dramatic.

What's more is that the story is spanning over a course of multiple months. This provides a short period of time for Sarah Palin to go from incompetent, to mental breakdown, to power hungry monster, and when you look at it, you really realize that in one scene it seems like things are cool, and then the next scene she's grown a huge head and thinks this is her campaign.

There are also parts of this film that don't exactly pay off. Now a lot of this is supposedly based off real life so I have to imagine that some of that is based off reality and reality doesn't always have those tightly tied off bowtie endings, but there just seemed to be a couple things in this movie that I thought were going to pay off but they didn't.

Overall, this movie seems a little bit uneven at times.

The performances again are good, I just don't feel like they totally compliment the movie the way they should.

If you like politics, you're probably going to like this movie a lot more than a lot of people will. However, even people who like politics might get caught up by some of the bad writing and the dialogue int his movie.

Overall, I like it, I just don't recognize it as a very good film.

But what do you think? Have you seen Game Change? Let me know what you think. Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as movies and TV shows I should review in the future. You can also follow me on Twitter to get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. Keeping in a political mood. Here is John Oliver talking about Donald Trump. Even if you're not a political person, and even if you don't like John Oliver, this is an incredibly educational voter that gives you all the information before you would vote for someone like Trump. Enjoy!