Palin movie: No thumbs up! Reviewers pan hagiography
By MOLLY BALL | 7/16/11 3:52 PM EDT
The reviews are in on the Sarah Palin documentary, and they are not kind.
The pro-Palin film “The Undefeated” opened in 10 midsized American cities Friday to a chorus of boos from professional film critics.
Reviewers – not generally a conservative lot – faulted its one-sided portrayal of Palin’s rise to power in Alaska and national prominence.
New York magazine’s David Edelstein said he really tried to like the film. “I swear I gave The Undefeated a chance, because who wants to writhe in agony for two hours?” he wrote. “I hoped that director Stephen K. Bannon would show a side of Sarah Palin I’d never seen — I thought it would be so cool if I could give the movie a rave. But it’s a straight hagiography, without nuance or ambiguity or the admission of opposing viewpoints, even those meant to be dismantled.”
Other reviewers were also quick to call the film propaganda.
Time magazine’s Richard Corliss, for example, wrote that the director “applies so much idolatrous air-brushing to his portrait of the Divine Sarah that the movie might be called ‘Going Rouge.’”
Later in the review, Corliss added, “The movie may tempt even the most ardent conservatives to emulate their idol’s tenure as Governor and walk out halfway through.” Director Steve Bannon, he wrote, needed to get a sense of humor.
The movie has received plenty of political analysis since it began being shown to reporters and activists a month ago, but now that it’s being presented to the general public, it’s being newly analyzed as an artistic document.
The Orlando Sentinel’s Roger Moore gave it 1.5 out of four stars, saying it was “persuasive” in its portrayal of Palin’s gubernatorial accomplishments. But he said its lack of balance eroded its credibility, calling it “an infomercial of almost comical omissions.”
On the review-aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, 10 reviewers had collectively given it a positive score of zero percent.
Bannon, a maker of conservative films whose last project was about the tea party, has said he believes “The Undefeated” will appeal to a general audience of nonpolitical Americans, winning them over with Palin’s anti-establishment bona fides. Its title is a reference to Palin’s supposedly indomitable spirit and values.
But the Onion’s A.V. Club opined that it was “difficult, if not impossible, to imagine anyone who isn’t already a devoted Palinite seeking out or sitting through ‘The Undefeated.’” The reviewer gave it a D-minus.
The L.A. Times’s Robert Abele said “The Undefeated” reminded him of a bad action movie: “hero-worshipping, crescendo-edited at a dizzying pace, thunderously repetitive and its own worst enemy as a two-hour, talking-points briefing.”
Other major newspapers, including the New York Times and Washington Post, didn’t bother to review it at all.
The first professional critic to review the movie, the New York Post’s Kyle Smith, was also the first to pan it, writing in early June that it was “an excruciating combination of bombast and whining.” A self-described conservative who expected to be more receptive to the film’s message than his New York colleagues, Smith later blasted the film’s promoters for trying to uninvite him from its Big Apple premiere.
But if the filmmakers were hoping Smith would be the exception as the movie got a wider rollout, they’ve been disappointed.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59188.html#ixzz1SJlu0i7r
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