Bobby
Movie Review
Bobby
by Eric D. Snider
Grade: B-
Released: November 23, 2006
Directed by:
Cast:
The point of "Bobby" is not to dissect Robert F. Kennedy's life but to suggest what America lost when he died. To a lot of people, he was the last great hope for the Democratic Party and for America. His death early in the morning of June 6, 1968, 24 hours after he was shot, was a crushing blow. He was on his way to becoming the Democratic candidate for the presidency and likely would have beaten Richard Nixon in November. What if he had lived? How would America be different now?
That's my best guess as to the film's message. I arrived at it later, not during the screening. During the film itself, my thoughts were more along the lines of: This is nice and all, but what's the POINT?
This is a movie written and directed by Emilio Estevez, and I think it's safe to say that no one on earth thought he had this level of seriousness, depth, and maturity in him. I marvel at the cast he managed to assemble, too: Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, Heather Graham, Helen Hunt, Laurence Fishburne, William H. Macy, Christian Slater, Ashton Kutcher, Lindsay Lohan, Joshua Jackson, Sharon Stone, Elijah Wood, and Demi Moore. Oh, and Martin Sheen, but getting your dad to be in your movie isn't very impressive.
It begins like a disaster movie. Many disparate characters are introduced, all sharing a geographical bond (they're guests or employees at the Ambassador Hotel) but otherwise having no connection to each other. We learn their stories and see what their lives are like. They know it's a big day -- it's the Democratic Presidential primary in California, and Kennedy's campaign is headquartered at the Ambassador -- but they don't know just how big it's going to get.
It's almost staggering how many stories there are in this sprawling cast. Hopkins and Belafonte are a retired (but still present) doorman and his friend who sit around playing chess and reminiscing. Fishburne is the hotel chef, sagely dispensing advice to his co-workers and engaging in edgy, playful jibes with the Mexican dishwashers and waiters, fending off the blatant racism from the food-services manager (Slater). Graham is a switchboard operator who's having an affair with the hotel manager (Macy), whose wife (Stone) is a cosmetologist in the hotel's beauty parlor, where the hotel's boozy nightclub singer (Moore) comes for her daily touch-up. Lohan plays a young woman about to marry a boy she hardly knows (Wood) in order to keep him out of Vietnam.
Estevez (who plays the nightclub singer's husband) mostly films these people in and around the hotel with a Steadicam, floating down hallways and through conversations unobtrusively, like a very smooth you-are-there documentary. You get the sense of simply wandering through the hotel, eavesdropping on mini-dramas and getting to know this small cross-section of California in 1968.
The characters are fictional but their hopes and dreams are real enough, and every role is well-acted, even by lightweights like Lohan and Kutcher. (The latter plays a drug dealer who peddles to a couple of young Kennedy campaign volunteers, played amusingly by Shia LaBeouf and Brian Geraghty.)
Estevez very astutely uses news footage at the beginning of the film to remind us of the turmoil America was in at the time, and footage of the real Bobby Kennedy's final speech at the end of the film to suggest what a charismatic, idealistic candidate he was. You can see why people were excited about him, and why his death was so devastating. What it has to do with the fictional characters who populate the film, that's not quite as clear.
Grade: B-
Rated R, a few harsh profanities, some non-sexual nudity, some bloodshed
2 hrs.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
This work may not be transmitted via the Internet, nor reproduced in any other way, without written consent from Eric D. Snider.
This item has 8 comments
November 27, 2006 at 12:59 pm
I was pulled into "Bobby" by it's story and many characters. I just felt a little unfulfilled at the end of the film. Maybe it was thinking of what could have been. What this country could have been if there were no Martin Luther King or Kennedy
assassinations.
November 30, 2006 at 12:09 pm
I am surprised that a bright guy like you missed how the fictional characters were connected to Bobby Kennedy. Did you miss the assasination scene where many of them were hit by stray bullets? Did you go out to pee during those riveting final scenes?
November 30, 2006 at 12:41 pm
WHAT?! People get shot at the end?!
Yes, some of the fictional characters are connected to him THAT way -- but that's entirely random and coincidental. It doesn't explain how they are connected to him thematically, which is what my review was talking about. I'm surprised a bright guy like you missed that I meant thematically, not happened to be standing near him when he got shot-ly.
March 16, 2007 at 3:04 am
I saw 'Bobby' last night and I found it really powerful.It was deceptively simple, elegant in its cumulative effect, and despite the sad fate, there was a lovely innocence about it in there somewhere.
I remember RFK's assasination very clearly- I was only 6 years old, but he is the first political figure I can recall/ We were living in Canada, far from australian politics and Bobby Kennedy became a benevolent figure for us in a racist black/white divided country like America (and we wished we had such a figure as RFK in equally racist Australia). His death hit hard. It was just so awfully sad, and the film really captured the essence of the feelings of the time and had resonances far beyond RFK- maybe that was in Esteveze's mind as well.
April 28, 2007 at 10:28 pm
I watched "Bobby" this evening and was impressed. It brought back memories from my childhood. I can still remember my grandmother crying after Bobby Kennedy was killed. It was a very sad time for alot of people.
Emilio Estevez is fantastic actor and director. His father who is the President of the United States on the West Wing is also very political. Maybe someday they will go into politics. Ironically, I have an Estevez political campaign sticker on my car but it is not Emilio. In New Hampshire I met congressional candidate Eric Estevez.
The movie about RFK should be watched by every American.
April 30, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Bobby is a great movie. It was very inspirational. Emilio Estevez is a great director.
May 13, 2007 at 1:29 am
...the point of the fictional characters is NOT to show that all of these random people at the hotel were just randomly connected to him by contact...it was to show their emotional and ideological connections with him. This film showed that all of these people from differing backgrounds, differing races and genders, even different nationalities, and who were all dealing with different problems in their own personal lives were all brought together in their support for Bobby Kennedy. In the end...when they all come together when they are joined by one another in mourning. When the Hotel Manager helps the Kitchen Manager...when the Hotel Manager reconciles with his wife...when they are all suffering...they all understand that they have lost America's last great hope. The message is not "Hey look at all of these random characters"...it is "look at how many people, of so many backgrounds, that Bobby Kennedy was able to bring together."
Cannon was particularly AMAZING in his role...his raw emotion and his ability to capture the feelings of a young African American who after the loss of Dr. King relied on Kennedy to be his hope for a better future was phenomenal.
This movie was one of the best in a long time. It deserves an A+...not the B- it was given.
July 24, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Seeing this film now, I realize how unaware I was when the real events were happening. The film has real clips of Bobby throughout the film, and one can see and hear what he ws saying to people that made them love him. He was talking about a world where principles are actually what govern events, and peoples' needs are attended to. I needed to see this film now, and Estevez made that possible. Any did anyone notice which Democratic candidate is sounding like Bobby and evoking similar responses?