Sarah Palin (Julianne Moore) is portrayed as a complete idiot who's great at playing fast and loose with facts. It's very much a two dimensional portrait. Everybody else gets a pass. All the advisers are dumbfounded by her idiocy. John McCain (Ed Harris) is an honorable man who was forced by a losing campaign to dabble in the dark side. All of it would ring true to the political left, and a gotcha journalism to the right. Although the book seems to be deeply well-researched.

As for the acting, Julianne Moore does a good job mimicking. Ed Harris seems to bring a more substantial presence to John McCain. It also stars Woody Harrelson and Sarah Paulson. I do wish for a more 3 dimensional Sarah Palin character. It does look like a movie made by people who talk to and about Sarah Palin rather than anything insightful from Sarah Palin herself.

Liberals will see this as a confirmation of their most deeply held convictions about Sarah Palin; her supporters will see it as a typical attack of the mainstream media on a particularly outspoken representative of American patriotism.

Most of those in the middle will view it as an interesting exploration of the process of picking and managing a Vice Presidential candidate during an unusually intense campaign.

The public events that are covered -- mainly Palin's roller-coaster successes and bloopers -- are part of the data base shared by anyone who kept an eye on the new in 2008. None of them seem either exaggerated or underplayed. And whether Palin is succeeding or blooping, there are always reaction shots of campaign manager Steve Schmidt to cue our interpretation.

Of course, we all knew afterward that there was trouble in the bowels of the McCain campaign, that Palin was difficult, but what will be new to those who never read the book is the intensity of the disagreements. If the book, and the adaptation, are accurate, there were serious questions raised about Palin's emotional stability. They were raised by men, who always have difficulty understanding the way women's minds work, as I know all too well. I blame it on the different size of the corpus callosum in the two sexes but there isn't room to explain it here. Too bad. Read my forthcoming tome on the subject, "Men Are Brutes, Women Are Peculiar."

In the end it's difficult to tell how much Palin's candidacy contributed to the outcome of the election. (PS: Kids, John McCain and Palin lost and Barack Obama became president.) In his concession speech, every time McCain mentioned Obama's name the audience erupted in boos. And when he thanked Sarah Palin, standing behind him on the stage, they cheered lustily.

How does Julianne Moore do in her imitation of a very public figure? Not bad. The make up department has done a first-rate job. However, Moore is an exceptionally fine actress but she is not a prom queen. She's not as quietly sexy as Palin. She doesn't have the same full hips in that tight skirt, the same succulent legs, that perky rear end. And her voice is lower. It doesn't chirp in quite the same way. And she speaks more slowly and deliberately than the Palin we've become so used to hearing. But she's good at projecting precisely the right emotional nuances. Her eyes narrow and her lips tighten just to the proper degree when she's balked; and she brightens and pops like a Roman candle when the situation is agreeable. The movie doesn't paint her as an insincere maniac. Her love for her family is pointedly genuine.

The performance I thought most of was Ed Harris' as John McCain. He wallows rapturously in his industrial strength language. And he appears to have been -- and seems to have remained -- a decent and savvy guy of integrity pulled into taking positions by the changing nature of the American electorate. He refers to "the dark side of American populism." When his Vice Presidential candidate was clearly out of Steve Schmidt's control, Schmidt begged McCain to take over the task of shaping her up and McCain wisely refused. "She's liable to turn on me." Woody Harrelson does his best as Steve Schmidt but Schmidt is far harder to pin down than Palin ever was. Harrelson looks like one of those bald-headed hit men out of a cheap action flick. Schmidt is a pudgy, inoffensive-looking lump of very politically sensitive dough. And while Harrelson growls his way through the part, Schmidt, who was born in New Jersey, speaks in a voice that is sui generis. Sarah Paulson is a pathetic figure too.

In a way it's a tragic story. McCain, a seasoned pol, knew what he was about and we'll never know what his administration might have been like. But Palin, for all her feverish enthusiasm and pulchritude, was never meant to be a serious candidate for Vice President or, God Forbid, a President. You and I -- complete dolts when it comes to the details of governance -- know more than she did. As one of the campaign staff points out, political background doesn't make much difference. You have to be a celebrity. Obama is a celebrity and so is Palin. And Harrelson replies, "Yes. The difference is that one of them can't name a single Supreme Court decision and the other is a professor of Constitutional Law." I'm not sure that's entirely true, though. She'd probably heard of Roe v. Wade.

In any case, no need to feel sorry for Sarah Palin. She's constantly before the public and has made millions. The tabloid journalists who attacked her so avidly and stupidly ("When did your water break?") helped elevate her to this position. The person who generates the most sympathy is poor Steve Schmidt. During the intramural battle, a doctor remarks that he looks like -- well, to put it in more respectable terms, he looks as if he'd just been bucked off a Brahma bull or a moose.

HBO ought to be congratulated for coming up now and again with these perceptive and nicely executed examinations of current events and recent personalities. They don't all ring the bell, but what other network is willing to take on these kinds of challenges?

Arizona Senator John McCain (Ed Harris),selects Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (Julianne Moore),as his 2008 Republican Presidential running mate against Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Crowds love Palin, she meets the party's objectives by appealing to the base, gaining the independents, closing the gender gap and distancing themselves from the Bushs', (Sr., Jr., Jeb).

What they hadn't realized is that Palin was not well versed in domestic or foreign politics. She became overly concerned about alienating her Alaskan base, fretted over Tiny Fey's unflattering impersonation of her on Saturday Night Live and became increasingly homesick.

In her downward spiral she refuses to be tutored on policy by strategist Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson),spends large amounts of time in her room and is beginning to show signs of a nervous breakdown. Excellent portrayal of what happened.