Bobby
Emilio Estevez has assembled a huge cast to tell several intertwining stories. There are 22 characters in all and we get brief glimpses into their lives. The central thing that holds these stories together is that they all take place in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and they all happen just hours before Robert Kennedy was assassinated.
One thread in the film focuses on racism as it is imposed on Latino kitchen workers. Another story is about a young woman who is marrying a man just to keep him out of Vietnam. There is a tale about the hotel manager who cheats on his wife (she runs the hotel beauty salon). We meet two enthusiastic Kennedy campaign workers who fall under the spell of a drugged up hippie. There is the middle aged married couple who seem to rekindle the flame in their marriage during this day. There is also the alcoholic lounge singer who knows that she is close to being washed up. And there are the two retired employees who just can't seem to stay away from the hotel because so much of their lives were wrapped up in the time they worked there.
Some of the stories work and some do not. The stories about the retired men, the philandering manager and Latino kitchen workers were the best. The worst was the thread about the hippie and the campaign workers. The absolute worst scene in the film was the LSD trip. It drips of pretentiousness.
There are times when I felt the interconnectedness of the stories and other times it just didn't work. And some of the acting is very good and some of it is not. You would have to expect that from such a large cast. Anthony Hopkins (who is one of the executive producers) as the retired doorman, William H. Macy as the philandering manager and Laurence Fishburne as the head cook are all as good as you would expect them to be. It was nice to see Harry Belafonte in the film as the other retired man. Freddy Rodriguez was wonderful as one of the young Latino kitchen workers. Martin Sheen, Helen Hunt (as the married couple who rekindle their marriage)and Christian Slater (as the kitchen manager) are all good in their roles. Elijah Wood and Lindsay Lohan try to evoke emotion in their roles as the couple who are getting married so he will not go to Vietman. But their performances just don't ring true. The best acting in the film is by Sharon Stone as the wronged wife of Macy and Demi Moore (!) as the boozy singer. The worst acting of the film goes to Moore's real life husband Asthon Kutcher.
The last scenes of the film packs a real emotional punch. Before Kennedy comes up to make his victory speech Simon and Garfunkel's The Sounds of Silence starts to play. Listening to the song and seeing Kennedy make the speech brought tears to my eyes. Throughout the aftermath of the shooting Kennedy's "menace of violence" speech is played in voiceover mode and it helps to keep the emotions running high.
Estevez does a good job in intermingling real footage with the characters in the film. You feel like you are there. And the soundtrack is outstanding. While the film doesn't work all of the time it works more times than it doesn't. So on that basis alone I would recommend it.
If Robert Kennedy would have lived I believe that he would have been President. I don't know if he would have lived up to all of the expectations his supporters had - people rarely do. But just listening to his speeches and comparing them to what we have now makes me think that there has to be someone out there who can generate enthusiasm and bring this country back from the depths of despair. Although Bobby is only a film it gives us hope that better days might yet be on the horizon.
One thread in the film focuses on racism as it is imposed on Latino kitchen workers. Another story is about a young woman who is marrying a man just to keep him out of Vietnam. There is a tale about the hotel manager who cheats on his wife (she runs the hotel beauty salon). We meet two enthusiastic Kennedy campaign workers who fall under the spell of a drugged up hippie. There is the middle aged married couple who seem to rekindle the flame in their marriage during this day. There is also the alcoholic lounge singer who knows that she is close to being washed up. And there are the two retired employees who just can't seem to stay away from the hotel because so much of their lives were wrapped up in the time they worked there.
Some of the stories work and some do not. The stories about the retired men, the philandering manager and Latino kitchen workers were the best. The worst was the thread about the hippie and the campaign workers. The absolute worst scene in the film was the LSD trip. It drips of pretentiousness.
There are times when I felt the interconnectedness of the stories and other times it just didn't work. And some of the acting is very good and some of it is not. You would have to expect that from such a large cast. Anthony Hopkins (who is one of the executive producers) as the retired doorman, William H. Macy as the philandering manager and Laurence Fishburne as the head cook are all as good as you would expect them to be. It was nice to see Harry Belafonte in the film as the other retired man. Freddy Rodriguez was wonderful as one of the young Latino kitchen workers. Martin Sheen, Helen Hunt (as the married couple who rekindle their marriage)and Christian Slater (as the kitchen manager) are all good in their roles. Elijah Wood and Lindsay Lohan try to evoke emotion in their roles as the couple who are getting married so he will not go to Vietman. But their performances just don't ring true. The best acting in the film is by Sharon Stone as the wronged wife of Macy and Demi Moore (!) as the boozy singer. The worst acting of the film goes to Moore's real life husband Asthon Kutcher.
The last scenes of the film packs a real emotional punch. Before Kennedy comes up to make his victory speech Simon and Garfunkel's The Sounds of Silence starts to play. Listening to the song and seeing Kennedy make the speech brought tears to my eyes. Throughout the aftermath of the shooting Kennedy's "menace of violence" speech is played in voiceover mode and it helps to keep the emotions running high.
Estevez does a good job in intermingling real footage with the characters in the film. You feel like you are there. And the soundtrack is outstanding. While the film doesn't work all of the time it works more times than it doesn't. So on that basis alone I would recommend it.
If Robert Kennedy would have lived I believe that he would have been President. I don't know if he would have lived up to all of the expectations his supporters had - people rarely do. But just listening to his speeches and comparing them to what we have now makes me think that there has to be someone out there who can generate enthusiasm and bring this country back from the depths of despair. Although Bobby is only a film it gives us hope that better days might yet be on the horizon.
posted by Film Fanatic | 7:13 AM
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