- I think I dislike ensemble dramas where everyone goes about their business within 500 feet of each other and then somehow their lives all end up intertwined at the end. There was another movie like this that I saw this year but I can’t remember which one. Anyway, this drives me nuts because most of the time I don’t feel terribly engaged by any of the subplots. I could have done without the Martin Sheen / Helen Hunt plot, although of course you can’t cut Daddy’s storyline. Demi Moore’s as well was kind of pointless. Emilio Estevez’s character did not even need to exist in the first place, let alone with a pornstache. I really only felt really engaged in the last half hour or so because for a movie that’s taking place in a really politically charged era and dealing with a politician as the glue holding the story together, it was kind of the opposite of intense for a long time. I know the movie is not about RFK (despite the title) and more about the people and the era, but blah.
- I did enjoy: the two RFK campaign staffers on drugs; the Lindsay Lohan / Elijah Wood marriage of convenience; poor, sad, idealistic Nick Cannon; and Laurence Fishburne / Carla’s brother from Scrubs OTP kitchen banter.
- Joshua Jackson is still a cutie.
- I was unaware that Andy Warhol was shot around the same time. I was aware that he got shot in 1968, just not in such close proximity to RFK. And WTF @ Helen Hunt’s character acting like no one would know who Andy Warhol was in 1968. Bitch, plz.
- One of my favourite things about movies taking place in the sixties is how the people in charge of music have to run around trying to find lesser-known songs that still define the era because you can never get the rights to The Beatles or The Stones or anyone like that. I was actually shocked that they didn’t go with the standard fare you can hear in ten thousand other movies, and The Moody Blues’ “Tuesday Afternoon” was a bit of a surprise. [I momentarily had a psychotic fit because I mistook it at first for "Nights In White Satin" and I was like "DUDES THAT SONG WAS NOT OUT IN 1968!!" Then I realised it was my fault and forgave the music selector people.] Points given to the music people.
- That speech that Laurence Fishburne gave to Whatshisface about King Arthur was RIDICULOUS as was him drawing on the tiles on the wall, WTF. I mean, I get that it was setting up that shot at the end after RFK gets shot, but please, heavy handed much? Argh.
- Politicians were either better speakers in the sixties or had better speech writers or both, because I could listen to guys like JFK and RFK read speeches for hours. My mom thought the one at the end about violence went on a little long, but I rather liked it.
- Anthony Hopkins is SO SAD. Prime example of why you should never make your work your life. You end up hanging around hotels when you retire, begging people to play chess with you and pretending you’re the hotel doorman when senators drop by.
- The played Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” and during one of those montage sequences where there’s no diegetic sound, only the music, and then they brought RFK’s speech back up RIGHT AT THE BEST PART and we barely got to hear “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls”… because, you know, that’s only the best part of the freaking song. Points taken from the music people.
- I think it was partly because of the style of make-up, but Sharon Stone and Helen Hunt looked old. Well, I think they tried to age Helen Hunt to make her more likely to be married to POTUS, but I just assumed that Martin Sheen is totally capable of getting a hot young wife like Helen Hunt. Am I alone in this?
- In the closing credits they show a bunch of photographs of RFK as he ages, and all the ones of him and his brothers are killer. YAY KENNEDYS. It kind of made me randomly want to make JFK icons, WTF.
- Ashton Kutcher played his character with way too much irony than was appropriate.
- Emilio Estevez is hoping that Americans remember what wonderful people you are and stop being violent, the end. « This is what he wants you to get out of the movie.
- In the end, I think I would have just preferred a biopic, to be completely honest. And if forced to choose between JFK and Bobby, settle yourself down for four hours of awesome conspiracy theory instead of this movie.
Bobby
Oliver Stone 1, Emilio Estevez 0.
IMDB Plot Synopsis The story of the assassination of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy who was shot in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968 in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, and 22 people in the hotel whose lives were never the same.