Joe Barber Reviews “Bobby”

by Joe Barber on Nov.25, 2006, under Joe Barber's Movie Reviews

MOVIE REVIEW: “BOBBY”

June 5, 1968 and the events that took place at the Ambassador Hotel late that night changed the course of a decade and a nation. Just two months after Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Senator Robert Kennedy was shot shortly after winning the crucial California Primary. A campaign and a life were ended and a generation was plunged into a sense of despair that took many of them years to emerge from. Actor turned director and screenwriter Emilio Estevez looks at the hours leading up to the assassination and its ripple effect on a wide variety of people in the hotel that day and night in the new film “Bobby.” Though flawed in places, the film evokes the spirit of the man and the times with often superior acting.

We watch as waves of enthusiastic young volunteers descend on the hotel, the hub of the Kennedy campaign and the place where the senator with either celebrate a triumph or console his followers, since he’s vowed to quit the campaign if he loses the Golden State. In addition to the campaign workers, we meet the hotel’s kitchen staff, the managers and staff, journalists and guests. All of them a some sort of a connection to the primary and a campaign that seems to have become a crusade.

Estevez utilizes a kind of “Grand Hotel” plot structure to keep the film moving from moment to moment. In the small details, such as a young bride to be’s appointment to have her hair and nails done before her wedding or the disagreement between two mangers over giving the kitchen staff time off to vote, we get a wider perspective into what’s at stake in the nation and the racial, class and gender gaps that seem to be splitting ever wider as the day goes on.

Estevez’s story telling burden is made easier by the quality of the work done a number of the top notch talent who worked for scale on the film. Anthony Hopkins brings warmth a decency to the role of the Ambassador’s just retired doorman who has seen all the big names, but is moved by the energy he sees around him while hanging out in the lobby. Sharon Stone and Lindsay Lohan are excellent as the hair stylist and bride to be, respectively, who share a conversation on the reasons behind the younger woman’s hastily planned nuptials and the meaning of marriage.

William H. Macy, Laurence Fishburne, Freddy Rodriguez and Nick Cannon also deliver passionate performances that give the script and the film some heft. Unfortunately, some plot threads, siuch as the one involving Ashton Kutcher as a hippie drug pusher who turns a couple of slacker volunteers onto LSD and one featuring Martin Sheen and Helen Hunt as a May-December married couple struggling to recover from his depression and breakdown, really go nowhere, adding little to the movie.

Estevez’s best decision is to have no one play Robert Kennedy, instead using actual footage to invokes the man and the rock star-like atmosphere he brought to the campaign. The footage also helps to draw viewers into the mood that gripped the country at the time, the confusion and desperation as well as the hope Kennedy brought to those listening to his message. That message and his effect on people are most powerfully brought home in the film’s final minutes, as we hear a recording of Kennedy’s eulogy for Dr. King. It is in these moments, and several others that the promise and the pain of that night are made clear.

Clearly a labor of love, “Bobby” falls into some of the traps any such project would have. But it succeeds wonderfully in many places in giving audiences a glimpse of a time when one strong, clear voice said many of the things our nation need to hear and wanted to say. Hopefully younger viewers will take some inspiration and older viewers will remember that politics can b more than just attack ads. One can hope and, thanks to this movie, remember.

MPAA RATING: R for profanity, violent and drug content and sexual situations.
JOE’S RATING: THREE STARS.

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