Bobby (2006)

Directed by: Emilio Estevez | 120 minutes | drama, history | Actors: Harry Belafonte, Joy Bryant, Nick Cannon, Emilio Estevez, Laurence Fishburne, Brian Geraghty, Heather Graham, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Joshua Jackson, David Krumholtz, Ashton Kutcher, Shia LaBeouf, Lindsay Lohan, William H. Macy, Svetlana Metkina, Demi Moore, Freddy Rodriguez, Martin Sheen, Christian Slater, Sharon Stone, Jacob Vargas, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Elijah Wood

‘Bobby’ is Emilio Estevez’s stylish dramatization of a day in the life of the guests and employees of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. It’s not an ordinary day, because in the evening Robert Kennedy – brother of the assassinated JFK – arrives to celebrate his candidacy for the 1968 presidential election. That this Bobby means something to everyone in the hotel is not historical fact, but it is easy to imagine that the charming and articulate Kennedy in the dark year of 1968 (murder of Martin Luther King, race riots in Detroit, escalation of the Vietnam War) has been a beacon of hope and many Americans view death as a missed opportunity for a more humane society.

Estevez tries to emphasize the latter. Its set-up is excellent: the hotel houses a cross-section of American society: managers, telephone operators, waiters, journalists, drug dealers, manicurists, entertainers, you name it; their activities are also everyday activities: the hotel manager (William H. Macy) cheats, the waiters (Laurence Fishburne, among others) struggle with racism, a client of the beauty salon (Lindsay Lohan) gets married for a boy’s life (Elijah Wood’s) from Vietnam and drinks the hotel’s resident chanteuse (Demi Moore). Estevez has taken a good look at ‘Short Cuts’ and skillfully glues the slices of life together, aided by a star ensemble that doesn’t get away with it; while the various storylines remain somewhat superficial, seeing star actors in unusual roles is an entertaining affair, especially when beautifully dressed: William H. Macy in bed with Heather Graham; Sharon Stone as cheated wife; Demi Moore as an alcoholic; Ashton Kutcher as LSD Guru: Estevez has convinced his people.

However, the small suffering and the actor’s violence scattered throughout the film distract from Estevez’s core message: that Robert Kennedy could really have been a binding factor in the hardened and divided America of 1968 and his death was a turning point in American history. The scenes in the hotel kitchen are beautiful, where immigrants each try to survive in their own way, but it is the only part of the story that really fits the theme of the film; Moore and Stone’s conversation about women and aging is tragicomic, but the Kennedy story fades into the background because of this kind of interlude.

It is understandable that Estevez uses human stories to emphasize the image of Robert Kennedy, which is only presented in historical images, but the combination is not optimally exploited; especially because of the large number of storylines, which could have been cut. ‘Bobby’ therefore lingers in good intentions and sketchiness.