Revolutionary Rants

I did promise a film review of Bobby. I was pretty excited about this as, as you all no doubt know, I am very interested in American politics in general and that Kennedy-era stuff always has a bit of excitement because there was a chance for some change (a slim chance with America, but one that was not to be). However, this was a disappointing film which was deeply sentimental. Deeply sentimental, to the point of being sick-making.

Because there were so many current starlets the whole film somehow didn’t look within its era, plus there were just too many stories going on. Anthony Hopkins played his ‘nice old man’ role for the hundredth time without there being any point to him being there, the same was true of the ghastly couple played by a simpering Helen Hunt and Matin Sheen. Although the young Mexican bus boy (Freddy Rodriguez) was well played the nauseating scene with Laurence Fishburne sort of spoiled that. All of these were topped by the awful story involving La Lohen and Frodo Baggins. When I read the real woman’s story in the paper a couple of weeks ago i thought it would be an interesting part of the film. In reality she married her boyfriend’s brother to prevent him having to go to Vietnam, in the film they fell in love prior to their wedding. I exclaimed out loud ‘oh my god…’ in the cinema at this point, I must admit…

There was very little politics in it, very little set-up of the situation and the cutting in between the film and footage of RFK merely made the whole thing look faker (in a way that JFK avoided). The saving grace was the two young campaigners taking a acid trip, the shooting scene and the always watchable William H. Macy.

All in all, don’t bother, it is trying to be Altman-esque, it is trying to be heavy political statement, it is in fact a diverting piece of fluff.

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