Sarah Palin: A love-hate story

Sarah Palin is in the midst of a new campaign -- to convince you to ignore HBO's new movie "Game Change" and invest your time in the rah-rah documentary "The Undefeated," also premiering this weekend.

The former vice presidential candidate says she hasn't seen "Change," a dramatization of the 2008 campaign that stars three-time Oscar nominee Julianne Moore as Palin, but her instincts are right on: It's such a hatchet job it could have been directed by her daughter's ex, Levi Johnston.

The actual director is Jay Roach, best known for such comedies as "Austin Powers" and "Meet the Parents." He's tackled presidential politics before, in the Emmy-winning "Recount," an account of the Bush-Gore legal battle. But here he can't resist the urge to go for laughs, focusing almost entirely on Palin's gaffes.

All the major bloopers are here: the disastrous interview with Charlie Gibson. Her apparent unfamiliarity with international affairs. Her shopping spree before her convention speech in St. Paul. The even more disastrous interview with Katie Couric.

Moore, who rises above just doing an impression, does her best to make Palin sympathetic, but the script by Danny Strong (who also wrote "Recount") rarely shows her human side. Only in a scene where she gets shook up watching Tina Fey skewer her on "Saturday Night Live" do you feel like the filmmakers give a darn about the woman.

"Game Change" seems so determined to make Palin look like a buffoon that great actors such as Ed Harris, playing her running mate Sen. John McCain, and Woody Harrelson, as political strategist Steve Schmidt, blend into the background. They're merely there to set up the jokes.

The film is adapted from a 2010 bestseller that focused largely on how Barack Obama won the White House. HBO has defended its choice to concentrate on Palin, even though she takes up only about a fourth of the book, arguing that a two-hour film can't cover everything.

On the flip side, "The Undefeated" -- airing Sunday on the ReelzChannel, owned by Twin Cities-based Hubbard Broadcasting -- is an out-and-out propaganda film that would seem over the top even at a Republican convention.

According to the movie, Palin "saved Alaska," started the Tea Party and is the heir apparent of Ronald Reagan. The accolades are so reverent that you can almost spot drool on the camera lens.

All the talking heads, from radio hosts to Alaskan bureaucrats, laud their heroine while bashing anyone who dares to question her validity as a leader.

To underline a point about government spending, director Stephen K. Bannon mixes in a shot of money being flushed down the toilet. When it comes to Palin's critics, he flashes to an angry dog. And just when you think the film couldn't be any more hyperbolic, there's a zebra being eaten by a pack of lions.

Really?

If universal adoration was indeed Bannon's plan, "The Undefeated" falls far short. Before it was picked up by ReelzChannel, the movie rolled out to a few theaters last year and died a quiet death on movie screens -- total ticket sales: $116,381 -- but not before New York magazine critic David Edelstein called it a "two-hour infomercial."

Edelstein was being kind. "Undefeated" tries to sell a personality without offering compelling reasons to buy.

What both "Change" and "Undefeated" lack is depth. Treating politics as an episode of "TV's Bloopers" or "When Animals Attack" does both the subject and the audience a disservice.