'Game Change': Review

If you missed Newsday's review of "Game Change" in last Sunday's "Fanfare," here it is again (on the jump). Bottom line: Julianne Moore is excellent. Never a caricature or parody, she clearly has genuine empathy for  her subject. This isn't a slash-and-burn portrait, by any means, but largely sympathetic. OK, she doesn't know what the Fed does, but - scheesh - who does?! Palin actually comes out looking pretty good in Moore's capable hands. Charismatic, shrewd, and principled, she may not know much about the world -- all reported in "Game Change" -- but she works to learn (and sometimes doesn't, but that's another story that's told here). Danny Strong's script in fact is more critical of John McCain's advisers than it is of Palin herself. They're seen as grasping political operatives who cynically plucked Palin out of obscurity to address their candidate's own shortcomings. They're the ones who should be really mad at "Game Change."