THE BIOPIC PROFILING Sarah Palin’s remarkable and in some eyes puzzling rise through American politics did not enjoy a great opening weekend at the box office.

Palin would not have been expected to rake in the $92 million (€65 million) that Harry Potter made, but the $75,000 (€53,000) that it took is described in The Times (subscription required) as a “piddling” amount.

However the film has only been shown in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Phoenix, Orlando, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Oklahoma City and Orange County in California.

The Undefeated, financed by its Palin-supporting director and writer Stephen Bannon, is a two-hour documentary that charts Palin’s political career from her time as governor of the state of Alaska through to the 2008 presidential election when she was the vice presidential candidate for the Republicans.

Palin has not yet declared whether or not she intends to run for president in next year’s election.

The battle for the Republican party nomination is already well underway but so far the former Miss Alaska contestant is keeping her cards close to her chest.

The film got a less than positive review from The Hollywood Reporter which says it is “stitched together with a thousand sound bites” and is an “entirely partisan account”, noting that it “looks like a campaign film for a campaign that at least for the moment isn’t happening.”

The Reporter also notes the puzzling title given that Palin lost the presidential election in 2008 and stepped down as governor of Alaska.

On Rotten Tomatoes, there have been nearly 600 user ratings of the film but a grand total of zero per cent of them said they liked it.

The LA Times notes a “soft” start to the film’s takings but reports that the film’s distributors are hoping to announce a wider release shortly in the hope that the film’s popularity will take on the kind of meteoric rise that its protagonist has enjoyed.