Gliberal Toss
The Girl dragged me to see Bobby at the cinema this evening.
The good Doctor Kermode described it as Gliberal and I must agree. It seeks to be a hymn to the lost optimism of the sixties, instead its a vomit inducing string of lazy liberal clichés rather than a real engagement with who RFK was, and his place in the late 1960s mileau. To be frank my overwhelming emotion during the climatic ballroom scene to be a desire for them to just get on and shoot him already.
The film's worse sin is that it just doesn't earn its climax. There are so many interweaving stories that you don't have time to form an attachment to any of the characters, especially the eponymous Bobby, who is only ever seen in grainy newsreel footage shoehorned into breaks in the action. So the bloodbath in the kitchen at the end has no more emotional impact than the nightly scenes of death and destruction on the 10 o'clock news.
Its not all bad. William H Macy is as watchable as ever, and Lyndsay Lohan is almost unbearably cute. Frustratingly there is probably a good film to be made about RFKs run for president with the events in the Empress Ballroom forming an emotinal fulcrum, but this isn't it. Don't waste your money.
The good Doctor Kermode described it as Gliberal and I must agree. It seeks to be a hymn to the lost optimism of the sixties, instead its a vomit inducing string of lazy liberal clichés rather than a real engagement with who RFK was, and his place in the late 1960s mileau. To be frank my overwhelming emotion during the climatic ballroom scene to be a desire for them to just get on and shoot him already.
The film's worse sin is that it just doesn't earn its climax. There are so many interweaving stories that you don't have time to form an attachment to any of the characters, especially the eponymous Bobby, who is only ever seen in grainy newsreel footage shoehorned into breaks in the action. So the bloodbath in the kitchen at the end has no more emotional impact than the nightly scenes of death and destruction on the 10 o'clock news.
Its not all bad. William H Macy is as watchable as ever, and Lyndsay Lohan is almost unbearably cute. Frustratingly there is probably a good film to be made about RFKs run for president with the events in the Empress Ballroom forming an emotinal fulcrum, but this isn't it. Don't waste your money.
posted by Bernard at 11:35 pm
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