Bobby – This Emilio Estevez written and directed movie focuses in a trivial and whimsical way on the staff of the Hotel Roosevelt, on the night that led to the assassination of the great Robert F. Kennedy. And while we get what Estevez was going for here – the common man – the blue collar guy dreaming of the outcry for peace and justice, it doesn’t work. Because their stories leading up to the big night aren’t anything we care about. There’s the hotel manager (William H Macy) having an affair on his hairdresser wife (Sharon Stone) with his telephone operator girlfriend (Heather Graham) only to be detected by his assistant (Christian Slater) who befriends the kitchen help (Freddy Rodriguez). Lindsay Lohen plays a young bride to her groom Elijah Wood, while Martin Sheen has to juggle the emotions of his spoiled wife (Helen Hunt.) And there’s Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, Demi Moore as a drunken actress, and her real life husband Ashton Kutcher, as a hippy stoner. But in the final moments of the movie, when Kennedy is shot in the kitchen, and some of the staff is shot too, the movie finds its salvation through one of Kennedy’s famed speeches – the hopeful glue between blacks and whites. It is then that we are reminded of that fateful time in history, when America realized, the dream of what could still be after President John F Kennedy, was over. Two Tiaras
