The new HBO movie Iron Jawed Angels (which debuts this weekend) depicts the final struggle of the women’s-suffrage movement, which culminated in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The battle for suffrage was a long and difficult process spearheaded by ingenious and talented women, and some of their travails make great dramatic fodder. Unfortunately, however, most of the movement was concentrated on the arduous amendment process–which was a little dull for HBO. To make the plot sexier, this film repeatedly relies on a) the beauty of its actresses and b) anachronistic scenes in which modern-day women are unable to cope in the world of the 1920s.

Alice Paul and her suffragettes were jailed; they protested their sentences with a hunger strike, which received a great deal of public attention. To put an end to the publicity, the authorities force-fed the women–sparking even more publicity. This incident earned them their epithet of “iron jawed” and revved up the suffrage movement even further.

So far, so good; but the film’s historical problems soon emerge. Although Alice Paul did not marry and was extraordinarily educated for the time (and even for today), she could not have been the latter-day feminist the movie depicts. She famously said that “abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women,” but in this film she is disgusted by all things related to family life. She laughably tries to console a single friend by saying: “Leave the baby-making to the women who aren’t lucky enough to have your brains or your ability.”

Hilary Swank’s performance as Paul is a thin caricature: a humorless woman who belittles dissenters, shuns real emotional involvement, and even fears children. In one scene, Paul rejects her fictional love interest and spends an evening pleasuring herself. Susan B. Anthony would be so proud.

The other characters fare no better. Their costumes may be great, but the stereotypes become tiresome quickly. The men are either misogynist ogres or wimpy pushovers, while suffragettes are either sex-obsessed beauties or dowdy matrons. The film’s depiction of these two types of women is a heavy-handed attempt to underscore the rift that Paul caused in the feminist movement by breaking away from the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Because the women in NAWSA would not support efforts to pass a federal suffrage amendment, they are depicted as old and ignorant women who dress in black, stuff their faces with food and drink, and prattle constantly about how not to offend men. In contrast, Paul’s suffragettes are young, nubile women who ogle men and blather on about sex when they’re not dressing up or chain-smoking. Only the fictional Erica Leighton, played by Molly Parker, has any depth; Parker manages to maintain a demeanor appropriate for the era while her character struggles with balancing her duties as a senator’s wife with her feelings about suffrage. The other actresses might dress the part, but seem ill at ease in the time period.

Anachronism is a problem throughout. The women often seem to confuse the struggle to get the vote with the sexual-liberation movement; Paul channels the future spirit of Nike Inc. when she begins the suffrage parade at President Wilson’s inauguration with the words “just do it.” The camera angles and montages are flashy but out of place; the music choices are also strange, most notably setting the march on Capitol Hill to Lauryn Hill.

Iron Jawed Angels is an attempt to rescue women’s history from the strangling jaws of Lifetime and Oxygen. Unfortunately, as much as it resists, the film cannot avoid the pitfalls of the women’s-TV-movie genre. The star-studded cast could not save this misguided effort to gloss over history with quick sound bites and a love story. They might have come up with something more interesting to say to today’s women had they stuck with the original storyline.

–Meghan Keane is an NR editorial associate.