KEY POINTS:
Review
"Ambitious for New Zealand - Meet John Key"
Herald rating: ** (out of possible *****)
Cast: John Key as John Key.
Also starring: John Key.
Running time: 12 minutes 59 seconds.
Available on DVD, National Party's website and YouTube.
Hold the popcorn. Citizen Kane this
isn't. It's Citizen Key in a 13-minute epic saturated with more artificial sweetener than The Sound of Music and ET combined and which manages to make National's leader look about as deep as one of The Stepford Wives.
But that's political promos for you - always full of syrupy sweet platitudes and meaningless management-speak to get voters to swallow the message. This one was supposed to be a bit different, however. It was supposed to give voters a much better idea of what really makes John Key tick.
While Key's favourability rating with the public may be high, a large chunk of voters still feel they don't really know the Leader of the Opposition.
They will not be much the wiser for viewing this DVD which has been produced to accompany Key's profile-raising 40 towns-in-nine-days pre-Christmas whistle-stop tour of New Zealand.
We see him driving past the state house in Christchurch in which he grew up. He tells us how - as any 10-year-old might - he once accidentally shoved his older sister through the front door as she was doing cart-wheels.
We are reminded of his overseas work experience which included "senior managerial jobs" - a reference designed to soothe worries about his ability to run a Government.
We see him trying to shed the "rich man" bogey by his emphasising family is more important than money.
But barring his emphasis of how the virtues of ambition and hard work had combined with opportunity to help get him where he is today, we remain none the wiser as to any underlying set of beliefs or values driving him in his quest to be to Prime Minister.
What we get is the standard National Party attempt to dress up its leader as a sensitive human being, family man and all-round nice guy. But Key is in no need of such a makeover.
He already sells himself on that front with ease. What is missing from the DVD is something meaty that shows a leader with a depth of insight, intelligence and ideas.
Key is not short of those qualities. But they are not revealed by having him parroting that he is "ambitious for New Zealand", how the country is "missing the boat" and how National can do things better. Every politician is ambitious for New Zealand and thinks things can be done better.
The question is "how". But there are no answers here.
There is one clever moment. Key is filmed walking on the pitch inside Wellington's Westpac Stadium pointing out the 35,000 crowd capacity is equivalent to the numbers of New Zealanders heading permanently for a better life in Australia each year.
There is one revealing moment . Having declared himself "a beneficiary of the welfare state", Key warns current beneficiaries that National will expect them to put something back into society. Work for the dole perhaps?
But that is about as risque as it gets. It is all very safe and sanitised. That is unnecessary. Key does not have an image problem. His handicap is the absence of a track record of experience and achievement in politics which makes a lie of Labour's cry that he lacks substance. This DVD does nothing to silence that cry.