Movie theater gives refund for Sarah Palin movie, The Undefeated
It was after sitting through about 90 percent of the movie that I decided Sarah Palin's The Undefeated was 49 percent PBS-style documentary on how great Alaska is, 50 percent "Palin pal posse" circle jerk, and 1 percent Ronald Reagan references. Or perhaps a more accurate summation of this one-hour, 53-minute combo plate: an Alaskan-porno-Palin-sainthood-veneration sandwich with a bit of Ronald Reagan on the side, something like a wrinkly pickle. Shortly after the opening credits rolled, I wanted my money back.*
I am loathe to call this a movie, although it can be argued that it was quite theatrical. I trekked to the AMC Highlands Ranch 24, smuggled snacks in my bag and settled in. The opening montage of celebrities like Bill Maher, Louis C.K., Madonna and Matt Damon shoveling verbal manure on her was entertaining, but this was a few minutes followed immediately by a creepy, dark snow scene and a creepy, dark Bible quote from Matthew 7: 17-20 -- something about diseased trees, good fruit, bad fruit and a fire. I wanted my money back.
Next up was home videos of Palin and the fam, with children singing a hymn about swords in the background. Palin's audio-diary dialogue accompanied the scenes for the rest of the movie, interspersed with her pal posse's personal editorials about her awesome awesomeness, and her lead-off issue was how the Exxon Valdez incident made her want to get into politics. I wanted my money back.
The "God-Bless-Alaska" infomercial scenes took up a goodly portion of the flick, leading up to Palin's stint as mayor of Wasilla and her divine achievements with infrastructure and fiscal responsibility, and this is about the time where the thin veil gets torn asunder and the movie stops appearing to be a movie and transforms into a well-funded and disturbingly lengthy campaign advertisement. Don't misunderstand; it was always this, but it began to reek of naked, sweaty political opportunism at this point. I wanted my money back.
The Palin pal posse referred to her run-ins with criticism as a "spiritual battle," compared her to David against the Goliath of the oil companies and touted her resignation from the oil and gas commission after her whistle-blower routine as her way of "maintaining her ethics," and then cut to her inaugural swearing-in as governor amid blatant references and imagery comparing her to James Stewart's character in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. At this point I was so audibly banging my forehead against the back of the chair in front of me that several other moviegoers requested that I cease. I wanted my money back.
There was some more Alaska-suckling, blah blah, mumby-blah, the creepy snow scene reappeared a few more times and Palin blamed all of Alaska's problems on the last governor, did her turn on the government-cleanup catwalk, used the next few minutes to outline her qualifications to get the G.O.P. presidential nomination, she vetoed, she privatized a dairy, more about her triumphant battle against big oil and references to her being the solution to the "cigar-smoking good old boys" network. At this point I noticed that she had a nice rack and she wears an exorbitant amount of eyeliner, but I still wanted my money back.
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