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100Game Change is less about Palin than it is about this sad state of political affairs....That message made an impression, as did two amazing performances, beginning with Julianne Moore's uncanny and nuanced portrayal of Palin.
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100Game Change is graced by three extraordinary performances in the leading roles, beginning with Moore's portrayal of Palin, which is both complex and entirely credible.
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100A luminous and fully alive portrait by a first-rate actress.
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91In the end, fans of well-paced political potboilers will find much to like about Game Change. As will those who simply want to be entertained by a crackling good melodrama.
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91Jay Roach, who directed the Austin Powers films and won an Emmy for the HBO political drama Recount, knows from parody and keeps his actors from slipping into it.
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88Seeing Game Change is like living again through the campaign of 2008.
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88Comparisons to The Iron Lady, a sloppy movie that has Meryl Streep in roaring good form, are inevitable. Is Game Change better? You betcha. [5 Mar 2012, p.41]
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80While Moore's performance is riveting, the most insightful aspects of the tale are the insider reactions.
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80A searing, sizzlingly well acted docudrama.
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80A brisk film extracted from the campaign-trail saga of that title--has delivered to Julianne Moore the meatiest role of her career.
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80Game Change is a compelling, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant dramatization of the behind-the-scenes machinations of the Republican side of the 2008 presidential campaign.
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80Ms. Palin dominates as a disarming egotist whose presumption is balanced by charisma and animal cunning--and in this film, as in life, she has the last smirk.
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80Filled with pulse-pounding, thriller-style music, Game Change is a thoroughly engrossing film made all the more compelling by Ms. Moore's performance.
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80The film isn't trying to break ground with revelations, so what it comes down to is whether Game Change is a good movie, as opposed to a balanced documentary. For the most part, it is.
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75A star-studded, fast-moving, generally entertaining film about Sarah Palin.
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75Moore's impersonation of Sarah Palin is the hook to reel you into HBO'S latest truelife political thriller.
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70The overall atmosphere of the film is surprisingly kind to all, much more fatalistic than hypercritical and certainly not derisive.
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70Tiny flaws come close to undermining the success of Game Change as a mere film.
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70Although Julianne Moore's uncanny mimicry of Palin's verbal tics will surely attract praise, the movie revolves around an equally compelling performance by Woody Harrelson as GOP strategist and campaign operative Steve Schmidt.
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60The movie is better than you've heard but not good enough to linger in the mind.
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60It takes a story whose outline we know and uses backstage access to turn it into a well-paced drama.
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50My problem with the film is that it's all surface.
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40Truth be told, Game Change does not make anyone look good.
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40The movie seems to want to make a larger point about modern politics from the way Palin's nomination was used by the flagging McCain campaign--as a shiny object to "change the narrative" and shift the buzz from Barack Obama--but the movie itself gets distracted by its own shiny object, Palin.
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Mar 8, 201225Roach's bland style and Strong's script never allow for anything to come of such challenging subjects, opting instead for uninventive hindsight.