If you have not seen The Iron Lady, do not expect it to help you form an informed political view on Margaret Thatcher. If you have, do not be deceived into thinking it has done so.

Thatcher's government believed that the jobs of over a million-and-a-half British people were a necessary sacrifice in its fight to curb spiralling prices. It believed that worsening poverty, homelessness and inequality were an acceptable side-effect of its quest for balanced budgets, competitiveness and high growth. None of these and other difficult issues - so essential to assessing Thatcher, her impact and legacy - are tackled in The Iron Lady. Superficial debate amongst those too young to remember and too lazy to learn will no doubt drag on.

No film should be condemned for putting the personal or the artistic before the political. This one deserves praise for its poignant portrait of old age, bereavement, the destructive nature of power and the bathos of its aftermath. Yet as even a conservative critic noted, 'the visceral response as the credits roll is overwhelmingly pro-Thatcher'. Such rehabilitation of a real individual merits scrutiny.

Continual shots of Thatcher's vivid hats and heels in a sea of brogues and bald heads typify the film's celebration of her fight against a sexist establishment. Fine, but disingenuous when we remember she did next to nothing on sexual inequality, under-representation, rape or reforming that same establishment. Montages of protest highlight her divisiveness, but also paint her critics solely as nasty, dirty workers - odd given that 2 in 3 graduates voted against her in 1987.

We are put squarely behind Maggie in her fight against moderate Conservatives, characterised here only by snobbery, sexism and treachery. Thatcher's maxims of the grocery store are faithfully portrayed; the impoverishment of the neediest that resulted less so.

In brief, a film of minimal, but unmistakeably Thatcherite, politics.