Bobby (2006)

just watch it!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

...is the right word about this film who has three basic virtues - the touching story, the wise ideas and the great cast. it is not easy to say why this film is real special. maybe, for the change of perspective. about politic, about America and about the profound revolution changing a society. the only decent word - see it ! maybe, for discover a surprising director giving his film as pledge for values, as map of beautiful characters, as history lesson. and as useful support for reflection.

-Bobby is a 2006 American drama film written and directed by Emilio Estevez, and starring an ensemble cast. The screenplay is a fictionalized account of the hours leading up to the June 5, 1968 shooting of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the kitchen of The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles following his win of the 1968 Democratic Party presidential primary in California.--Critical reception:-Bobby received mainly mixed reviews from critics, who praised its ensemble cast and the direction of Emilio Estevez but criticized the film for having too many plot points and characters. It has a rating of 46% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 169 reviews, with an average score of 5.6 out of 10. The consensus states, "Despite best intentions from director Emilio Estevez and his ensemble cast, they succumb to a script filled with pointless subplots and awkward moments working too hard to parallel contemporary times." The film also has a score of 54 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 31 critics, indicating mixed or average reviews. -A. O. Scott of The New York Times said, "Emilio Estevez . . . sets himself a large and honorable task. It is important to appreciate this in spite of his movie's evident shortcomings. Intentions do count for something, and Mr. Estevez's seem to me entirely admirable . . . The actors seem more like 'very special guest stars' than like real, 1968-vintage Americans, and their period-appropriate get-ups . . . are more distracting than convincing . . . Some of the stories feel too obviously melodramatic, while others are vague to the point of inscrutability. In the Vietnam- and drug-related plots, the point is hammered home too hard . . . while other narratives wind toward no discernible point at all. Nonetheless the ambition behind Bobby is large and serious." -Kevin Crust of the Los Angeles Times called it "an ambitious film drenched in sincerity and oozing with nostalgia that, despite the energy provided by its title icon via archival footage, falls flat dramatically in nearly every other way. It aspires for the Altmanesque interplay of Nashville or Short Cuts but instead feels like one of those '70s disaster epics such as Earthquake or The Towering Inferno, in which a star-studded cast endures melodramatic story lines as the audience awaits the inevitable momentous event and tries to guess who will be around at the finish . . . It's easy to become swept up in the palpable enthusiasm Estevez shows toward his subject, but the pedestrian and overly expositional dialogue of the film's characters proves to be as stifling as the excerpts from Kennedy's speeches are stirring." -Deborah Young of Variety said of Estevez, "Stepping up as writer and director in a way he never has before, (he) successfully pulls together a complexly designed narrative," and added the film "carries an eerie topicality that makes many of its insights instantly click." Armond White of New York Press wrote that the film "has a humane sweetness", and that it "literally and vividly unites different ethnic groups, labor strata and social castes" in a way that "is not schematic—its exactitude and believability has a Tocquevillian brilliance." -Steve Persall of the St. Petersburg Times graded the film C, calling it "a misguided jumble of too much fiction, few facts and zero speculation" and Estevez "a mediocre filmmaker." Michael Medved, who was in the Ambassador ballroom (20 feet from the podium) the night Kennedy was shot, awarded the film three out of four stars and called it "intriguing but imperfect." He added, "Emilio Estevez gets most of the feelings of the occasion right. But, the melodramatic, multi-character format proves somewhat uneven and distracting." -Richard Roeper said, "Estevez writes and directs with lots of passion, not so much subtlety . . . (He) wants the movie to be on the level of a Robert Altman film like Nashville but falls short." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film one star and called it "trite fiction" and a work of "insipid ineptitude." He ranked it among the worst films of 2006, as did Lou Lumerick of the New York Post, who dubbed it an "ambitious, but utterly wrong-headed trivialization. --Cast: • Harry Belafonte as Nelson • Joy Bryant as Patricia • Nick Cannon as Dwayne Clark • Emilio Estevez as Tim Fallon • Laurence Fishburne as Edward Robinson • Lindsay Lohan as Diane Howser • Dave Fraunces as Robert F. Kennedy • Jeridan Frye as Ethel Kennedy • Spencer Garrett as David • Brian Geraghty as Jimmy • Heather Graham as Angela • Anthony Hopkins as John Casey • Helen Hunt as Samantha • Joshua Jackson as Wade Buckley • David Kobzantsev as Sirhan Sirhan • David Krumholtz as Agent Phil • Ashton Kutcher as Fisher • Shia LaBeouf as Cooper • William H. Macy as Paul Ebbers • Svetlana Metkina as Lenka • Demi Moore as Virginia Fallon • Freddy Rodriguez as José Rojas • Martin Sheen as Jack • Christian Slater as Daryl Timmons • Sharon Stone as Miriam Ebbers • Jacob Vargas as Miguel • Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Susan Taylor • Elijah Wood as William Avary

In this production the director attempts to return us to the mood of the late 60s - an era where too many of us believed the improbable was the likely and the customary was the enemy. Estevez employs the technique of "look(ing) at things the way they {were}, and ask why" ... then dream of what never was but try to make it true on camera.The film is filled with fictional accounts of the invented lives of guests and employees at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles - "people com(ing), people go(ing), nothing ever happening" until the final moments of the film. Yet in this paean, the title character is treated so reverentially the role of Bobby remains uncast. Instead, Estevez uses news clips to establish mise-en-scène. Unlike the film's never identified shooter, the director misses.The film's only contrast is that it omits important historical facts in preference for the superfluous. Despite the film's buildup of election year hope in the fictional characters, we are not shown the Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan's motive of despair or Bobby Kennedy's firm support of Israel during the Six-Day War and beyond. Despite the unacknowledged troop buildup in Vietnam by John Kennedy, the film hovers on Bobby's desire to remove those troops quickly. Despite the hope in RFK presented through the eyes of a young black "everyman" campaign worker, the film neglects to tell us that, while Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy issued a directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap Martin Luther King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Instead of these historical relevancies we are treated to a view of how two of Kennedy's campaign workers would have looked if they had tried to play tennis while wearing business suits after dropping acid - more fiction.As Bobby in life, the film "Bobby" is full of hope but leaves us well short of its goal. Only one Bobby is blameless for this. 2 stars.

I wish this movie was about Bobby Kennedy. It certainly ends up with some excellent speeches by him. In fact, the majesty of Bobby's vision at the end of the movie overpowers the all of the previous parts of the movie.Instead the movie is about the people at the hotel on the day he died. And then it drops their stories cold once Kennedy is shot. It is not a good story, political commentary or documentary. Despite an excellent cast, it is weak as water. Emilio won't find himself producing another movie soon.More text required. More text added here.