>>REVIEW
BOBBY
STARRING: Lindsay Lohan, Elijah Wood, William H. Macy, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Christian Slater and Anthony Hopkins
DIRECTED BY: Emilio Estevez
Opens Friday, November 24
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Despite its titular subject, Bobby is certainly not a film concerned with whether Robert Kennedy was, or was not, a great man. For writer/director Emilio Estevez, the subject is already decided – JFK’s younger brother would have single-handedly ceased the idiocy of the Vietnam War and reached across partisan and racial lines to bring the country together. In fact, it’s almost difficult to imagine why anyone bothers crying when he is inevitably shot. Won’t he just rise from the dead?
Any doubts of Kennedy’s messianic qualities are quickly allayed by juxtaposed footage of civil unrest and the Vietnam War, as well as sound-bites from Kennedy’s campaign speeches. Who needs to make an argument when you have montage?
Instead, Bobby is a pop culture survey course on the 1960s, explaining through nearly as many vignettes as Kennedy had children (11) that the ’70s were a time of:
· Racial tension
· The Vietnam War
· Racial tension
· Drug use
· Racial tension
From this diverse thematic palette, Estevez creates a film with themes so broad, and characters so thin, that its stock stories can only be saved by its generally strong ensemble cast.
With each plotline a single-note theme filled with single-note characters, Bobby is largely a confirmation of talent we were already aware of. William H. Macy plays to character as a struggling hotel manager in "William H. Macy playing someone vaguely pathetic." Estevez and Demi Moore show the bare competence they’ve built their careers on with "fading star is an alcoholic," and Ashton Kutcher proves that the only character he can ever be expected to play is himself in "drugs produce comical events."
Though he finds himself in a woefully underwritten "growing old is difficult" plot line, Anthony Hopkins proves to be a bright light, providing a shambling dignity to his role as a hotel concierge struggling through his retirement. The rest, from "political campaigns are stressful" to "dodging Vietnam… with love" are competent but stock pieces of ephemera content to bob around until the film is washed over by the inevitable, climactic melodrama of the assassination itself.
Though at times patronizing, painting its characters with insultingly broad strokes, Bobby is certainly still redeemable. Though it never feels compelled to do more than idolize the great man of its namesake, it is fortunate that its cast has the talent to bring life to its characters that its script refuses to provide. |
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