BOBBY

Director: Emelio Estevez (Men at Work, some TV work)
Starring: Virtually everyone in Hollywood. I'm not kidding.

Emelio Estevez must be friends with 90% of Hollywood. I'm not sure how, it's not like he's been starring in pictures with them lately. I mean he's only been in a handful of major films since Young Guns, and most of them had the word "ducks" in the title. Regardless, nearly every character in this film about the Robert Kennedy assassination (and there are a lot of them) has a Hollywood pedigree. There are more and more of these star-studded casts in cinema these days, and I am not a fan. Bring back the character actors, says I.

Anyhow, casting aside, the real problem with Bobby was seeminly the mighty duck himself, senoir Estevez. The film from beginning to end has the feel of a great college try, but that Emelio simply bit off more than he could chew. The end result is some decent film mixed thoroughly with great hunks of cheese. Not a lot of art in this film, and quite a lot of bad dialogue.

In construction this story is a dumbed-down Gosford Park ending with a political assassination. I like that idea. In fact I really like the general idea to the plot. The devil's in the details, though, and this film has a lot of imps causing mahem throughout. It follows 30 or 40 characters who work or stay in the Ambassador Hotel on the day leading up the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. We see hispanic busboys oppressed by "the man". We see Lawrence Fishburne as a wise Uncle Tom cook in the kitchens. We see cheating hotel managers, and drunk entertainers, and high school campaign volunteers tripping on acid. We see a super freckly Lindsey Lohan marrying Elijah Wood so he won't have to go to Vietnam. Of course every one of them is excited about Kennedy's election results and his party that evening at the hotel, hopefully to celebrate his impending nomination as the democratic presidential candidate.

Once the tragedy happens, they're all affected by this meaningless and incoherent killing by a madman. Just like everyone else in the world. We never see Sirhan Sirhan except for a couple of brief glimpes, because he's inconsequential. He's a nut who changed the world. Like I said, this story was a good idea. The problem was in the characters. Not a one of them was very well written. We'd occasionally be subjected to a cringe-worthy soliloquy, like when Lawrence Fishburne compares a hispanic busboy to a young king arthur. This was only one bad bit of dialogue among a whole lot of bad dialogue though. It's a shame because i think this could have been a very good film if a better writer had been involved. Oh well.

Standouts: Some ideas in the story, and a fair amount of good, solid acting albeit working with bad dialogue.
Blowouts: Most all of the details of the script. Poorly written.

Grade: C+