Bobby

The Ambassador Hotel serves as the grand setting for this film, which focuses on the legacy of Robert F. Kennedy or "Bobby," specifically looking at the day before and the day of his assassination. With a star-studded cast and years of research done, this should be an excellent, riveting film....right?
This film was a personal project of Emilio Estevez, who wrote, directed, and co-starred in Bobby. He chose to focus on a very specific time period, in regard to Kennedy's life and beliefs. Bookending the film--and appearing a few times within the story itself--are a series of very well-gathered, well-chosen, and well-edited clips of real footage of Kennedy during his life, his campaign trail, and the events of the time period on which is focused (specifically the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War). Also the recreation of the early 1960s was very precise and fun to see. However, where the film starts to falter is Estevez's choice to focus on the lives of 22 fictional characters who were all staying in the Ambassador Hotel, all who were supposedly connected to Kennedy in some way. His other mistake was to actually act in the film himself, playing one of the weakest characters, and not that well anyway. I can see what he was trying to do: Estevez was trying to communicate the issues that were central to Kennedy's campaign/life and that were central to the early 1960s. He was trying to do this in a more personable way by using specific people to live these troubles; this method is where he fails. Several of these characters literally contributed NOTHING to the plot or to my understanding of Kennedy. Early in the film, in one moment of horror, I realized that I was looking at a bespectacled, hippie-dressed, long-haired Ashton Kutcher. My abhorrence aside for that young hooligan, his character served no purpose. He sold LSD to two young men who were supposed to be out encouraging votes for Kennedy and there continued to be several very long scenes showing the effects of LSD. Was I supposed to understand that drugs, specifically marijuana and LSD were considerable problems or were very popular at that time? Fine, point well-taken. Was it a big issue for Kennedy? I don't really know, and still don't know after this film.
Another pointless character was that of Heather Graham (another actor for whom I harbor intense dislike), who plays a switchboard operator in the hotel, who is also having an affair with one of the higher-ups of the hotel, William H. Macy. And that's it. That's all she does. Next: Helen Hunt plays a fairly snippy, insecure, airhead wife who yaps on about her damn shoes being uncomfortable until her husband (Martin Sheen-nepotism, anyone?) finally asks her to be real, a result which I'm still looking for. I could literally go on with more pointless characters and aspects, but let me just mention a few characters that I actually was able to tolerate. Played by Elijah Wood and Lindsay Lohan (whom I usually find rather irksome, but was just fine in this film) played a young couple who were getting married so that once Wood was drafted, he would be sent to Germany as opposed to Vietnam. They however, had little screen time. Freddy Rodriguez and Laurence Fishburne play fine characters (both workers in the kitchen) who engage in a number of interesting conversations of race issues in the 1960s. I finally realized what was SORT OF the point of all these people at the very end when a number of them are injured by Kennedy's assassin. Oops, guess I should have warned "Spoiler alert!" there....whatevs. I really think that Estevez could have done some sort of a biography or some such project using completely archive footage and first-hand interviews (such interviews were in the DVD's Special Features section) to achieve his goal much better. Oh and by the way, an example of the randomness in this film, Harry Belafonte has a larger-than-necessary cameo as an old man realizing he is old. Tally me banana.