Book vs. Movie: Game Change

A few weekends ago I watched the HBO movie Game Change, based on the novel by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. I loved the book, which was about the 2008 presidential election. The book discusses the campaigns of Obama, McCain, Clinton, and Edwards, but the movie just focused on John McCain's campaign and specifically his decision to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate.

I thought the movie did a great job of staying close to the plot. The dialogue was taken practically verbatim from the novel, which I always like to see. The story is about Sarah Palin and how she affected the election. No matter how you feel about her, it's obvious that she wasn't vetted properly for her selection and she really wasn't qualified to be vice president. I also think there is room for interpretation. If you like Palin, the movie does at times seem sympathetic towards her and if you don't like her, there's definitely places where it's not.

Also I thought Julianne Moore did a fantastic job portraying Palin. She looks and sounds just like her!

Overall, I was very entertained by the movie and thought it provided a lot of great background information about the McCain campaign, which I found extremely interesting. If you are interested in politics I definitely recommend checking out both the movie and book.