Bobby

"It's nice that liberals win elections now and then, but I'm not sure they should be allowed to make movies," said David Denby in The New Yorker. Emilio Estevez's debut feature as a director simplifies Robert F. Kennedy and his cultural moment, turning the man into a bland martyr, and the country into a nostalgia-filled time capsule. Kennedy doesn't actually appear in the film, except in newsreels. Instead, we follow some two dozen characters who have gathered in L.A.'s Ambassador Hotel for the speech that will be the politician's last. The cast of boldface names includes Lindsay Lohan as a young peacenik, Ashton Kutcher as an LSD dealer, Anthony Hopkins as a shuffling retiree, Christian Slater as a racist kitchen manager, and Demi Moore as a drunken lounge singer. This ensemble of stereotypes and their clichéd struggles "turns the movie into a docent's tour of '60s discord," said Jim Ridley in The Village Voice. Issues of racism, war, and moral disintegration are played out one by one onscreen, while Estevez makes the obvious lefty points about similarities to today's political climate. It's syrupy and facile, but at least Bobby is watchable, said Scott Warren in Premiere. In fact, it's probably "the best political drama, fiction or otherwise, in recent memory."

Rating: R

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