I don’t know why stupid, stupid me thinks that when I see a movie called Bobby that says on the back of the box that it’s a movie revolving around some Kennedy named Bobby, with a bunch of pictures of Bobby and where everything has the general theme of Bobby, this movie is going to be about Bobby, but Bobby isn’t about Bobby, it’s about everybody not named Bobby who happen to be in the same hotel as Bobby on the same day that some moron decided to shoot Bobby, which is total bobbycock if you ask me. But alas, here’s Bobby, a “compilation of life stories” that focus around the lives of 20 some-odd people in the Ambassador hotel on the day that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated by some Asian guy.
Now, some of these stories have something to do with the fact that he’s arriving, others don’t, and as with films like Lions for Lambs, Crash and Magnolia, this movie tries to weave everyone’s stories together at the very end with some big “isn’t it a small world we live in” 20-car pile-up of pointless sentimentality. Ultimately, this is incredibly easy to do as everyone winds up in the same general area when Bobby gets shot because the whole movie is spent telling you that every character is spending the day in the same general area, well “fucking duh” movie. Sheesh.
Rather than focus on the individual stories of this ensemble cast (and holy crap do I mean ensemble), let’s focus on the big multi-colored ball of Plot Play-doh as a whole. For starters, I have to say I actually really appreciated the diversity in stories, there wasn’t too many about love, wasn’t too many about drugs, or sex (you can never have too many about sex. Oh wait…100 Girls…never mind), or even politics. There was a surprisingly nice balance of all of these topics and not only that, the pacing of it was incredibly easy to follow. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for a director to film all of these and say “how are we going to make sure that the audience will be able to keep track and at the same time not cut away from this story at a pivotal moment?” Bobby does a masterful job of keeping this in order and despite the fact that it tries to create some all-encompassing meaning out of all of these stories and fails miserably, each story individually has a lot of depth and heart to it that makes this worth the watch.
Where I struggled was with the over-arching theme and failure to tap into the time this took place. This movie took place in 1968, but really, this movie could have happened at any time, and nobody would have noticed if it weren’t for the needless glorification of Bobby Kennedy’s appearance, a single hippie, and radio footage of the 1968 World Series. I feel that if this stayed purely fictional, including having a fictional foundation, this movie could have had so much more power and impact than it did, but instead, it’s a dozen stories that, although very good in their own right, don’t leave us with anything to reflect on. Bobby Kennedy’s importance is shown in stock footage, and the movie refuses to actually cast a Bobby, but his presence is unnecessary except to get everyone into one place, and because of that, we’re expecting some sort of pan out and see these puzzle pieces fit together and we’re left with nothing.
Other than that, there wasn’t much. It’s a group of short stories. Good short stories, but I was hoping for something more out a movie that tries to revolve around such and iconic figure and it just wasn’t there. I still recommend the watch, but don’t expect anything amazing out of it. It’s a simple 7 out of 10 from me. One that if I were grading on entertainment value alone, would have been an 8, but it just missed on too much. I would put it in your queue though, regardless.
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