Posted: 11/26/2006

Bobby

(2006)

by Jason T. Hams

To announce one’s purpose outright in the first sentence of a review is much like spelling out an entire movie in the first minute, much as Bobby does in its first spoken line of dialogue (after a newsreel intro), a none-too-subtle allusion to Grand Hotel. Anthony Hopkins’ hotel owner describes the upstairs/downstairs nature of “that Great Garbo movie,” and we know immediately what we’re in for: a huge cast of A-listers slumming it in support of the film’s subject, followed by an execution. So, ultimately, the test of the movie is whether or not everything that leads up the execution is worthwhile or illuminating, how it expands on the inevitable and deepens it. How fitting is it that a week after we lost the great Robert Altman, we are saddled with Bobby, a film so sorely lacking in even the most rudimentary vision needed to make this star-fucking snuff film worthwhile? To watch Altman’s Nashville is to watch life before one’s eyes. To watch Emilio Estevez’s Bobby is to wish the fallen Kennedy dead and demand your money back.

I am already convinced that Bobby has the makings of an Oscar film. Appealing to the bed-ridden conservative voters who lump out tasteless Schlocolats in the wake of halfway challenging character pieces, even, there is another big, fat O attached to Bobby—Oprah. Just wait for the early-afternoon Crash-style blitzkrieg, with such a glorious cast sitting on Oprah’s couch and well-wishings of importance and significance both historical and contemporary as Winfrey urges her minions to seek out Bobby and pat themselves on the back for being a part of the importance. What could be more tasteless for the most tasteless movie of the year? An endorsement by Obama?

Make no mistake about it: Bobby has nothing to say about how we live today, or what transpired not 30 years beforehand, that a VH1 special can’t ladle out with more tact. Every caricature imaginable is doled out in a disaster epic-style parade of self-satisfied actors, each chained to an unconscionable speech of their own that details their shallow character’s intent, lest human interaction take its course. I have nothing but disdain for Emilio Estevez’s repugnant screenplay, run amok with dialogue unfit for human ears and monotonously paced scenes, each interchangeably earnest and uninvolving. Simply put, the man can’t write, and there is not a scene improved had the auteur not asked of his actors “…or just say something else.” Whether or not he can direct, he is certainly not up to the task of balancing this cast of 20-some-odd characters on his shoulders; when every performance feels as flat as that given by the dole-eyed, self-pitying Son of Sheen himself, and every camera movement feels so anonymously derivative of the work of others, little question remains that whatever nominal spark of humor or success in the film can be reduced to “Emilio wasn’t paying attention and something went right.”

Bobby is the worst movie of the year, an empty-headed work of heart and good intention that is a cold finger up the ass of any liberal and more ruinous to the cause than any Michael Moore documentary could ever hope for. Even worse is his unconscionable excising of anything real; were Estevez’s characters interesting, I could understand favoring them over the real victims who fell alongside Bobby, but alas, none of them come close. And we are left with ten minutes of somber, speechifying montage that the film doesn’t begin to earn. Bobby Kennedy himself is seen out of focus; so, it seems, is his tribute. Good intentions, my ass. I take dumps with good intentions; where’s my Oscar?

Jason T. Hams is a writer and film critic living in Chicago.

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