Bobby film review

certificate_15

BOBBY

There is little in Emilio Estevez's past to suggest he was capable, or even interested, in producing a work of substance. The last thing he wrote before Bobby was a 1990 screwball comedy about two garbage men. Hardly the perfect credentials for writing and directing a drama about the assassination of Robert Kennedy. The outcome is a well-intentioned, if frivolous attempt to provide a different perspective on one of the darkest days in American political history.

Rather than take the more obvious tack, Estevez has chosen to focus on some of the people who were present at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on that fateful day in June, 1968. Bobby chronicles the day of the assassination through the lives of a cross section including members of the kitchen staff, switchboard operators, beauticians, hotel management, Kennedy's campaign staff, reporters, hotel guests and even a singer at hotel's famed Coconut Grove nightclub.

The biggest problem with Bobby is the discrepancy between the light tone of the fictionalized events and the dark cloud of Kennedy's impending death that looms over everything. It would be a flawed corollary to think just because Bobby is about an important subject, that it is an important film. Take away the power of the newsreel footage of Kennedy on the campaign trail and the grainy film of that night at the Ambassador, and Bobby is more like a clichéd soap opera. There are domestic disputes, extra-marital affairs, rows at work, a marriage and drug taking. What there isn't is anything that has the weight to support the heavy burden of responsibility that comes with tackling such an earnest topic.

Estevez has assembled an impressive cast. It's probably quicker to list all the actors who weren't in Bobby. Clearly one of the advantages of coming from Hollywood royalty is the access it gives you to A-list talent. The disappointment is how little they are challenged. With so many stories to cover, each is only given a cursory outline, offering little opportunity for the actors to develop anything in the way of a fully formed character. And with big names and good actors taking insignificant roles, Bobby has an unsavoury whiff of indulgent privilege about it..