Bobby

I am not going to pretend to know the real history of this movie. All I know about Robert Kennedy I learned when I was 9 years old and that was taught to me by a 50 year old black man who believe Kennedy to be the only white politician to care about black people. This movie also portrays him as such and judging by the clips they show of the man giving speeches, it is hard not to get behind what he believed in. Of course this movie is not really about Kennedy, it is about a hotel full of people on the day of the election. The hotel is the Hotel where Kennedy would be giving his speech, win or lose. The movie stars about 50 people who have all head-lined a movie at some point and is at times incredibly dull, but at other points it is a wonderful and poignant film.


The main distinction between the dull and poignant is the individual story being told. See, this movie is like Crash or Magnolia where about 10 different stories are being told and they barely intersect. We have a story about 2 young men helping to get people out voting, but get sidetracked by dropping acid ( a bad story line), We get glimpses of a storyline about a aging lounge singer ( another bad storyline) but we also get an amazing storyline about the kitchen staff of the hotel. The kitchen staff storyline is where the meat of this film gets the most work. All of the kitchen staff is either Hispanic or Black, and in the late 60's blacks were making headway while the Hispanics were becoming the more loathed race. However, the event of this film happen post Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. These kitchen characters get the most interesting dialogue and it features a wonderful cameo performance by Lawrence Fishburne.


It is hard to say whether or not I enjoyed the movie because too much is going on. It gets difficult to care about all of the things going on when we only get them in 5 minute intervals. Perhaps that is the point. Maybe we are meant just to catch glimpses of the lives being led by all of these characters before another assassination demoralizes America further. Emilio Estavez wrote and directed this obvious passion product and he effectively weaves the camera in and out of storylines, but something just doesn't click. Very few of the rotating actors make an impression and in the end I am not sure what to feel about any of them except 2 or 3. The 15 minute climax is incredibly effective and allowing us to just listen to the words of RFK as they play out brought tears to my eyes. I am not sure if I got tears because of the movie or because I have never heard a politician talk like that in my life, but whatever the reason, this movie romanticizes the life and words of RFK and makes no apologies for it.