...while Estevez succeeds in catching some individually touching scenes, others are overwritten, phoney and irrelevant.
Bobby (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:161
Fresh:72
Rotten:89
Average Rating:5.6/10
Consensus: Despite best intentions from director Emilio Estevez and his ensemble cast, they succumb to a script filled with pointless subplots and awkward moments working too hard to parallel contemporary times.
Theatrical Release:26-01-2007
Synopsis: An ambitious labor of love from writer/director/star Emilio Estevez, BOBBY attempts to distill the hope, anger, and confusion that gripped the U.S. in the late 1960s. With the civil rights movement... An ambitious labor of love from writer/director/star Emilio Estevez, BOBBY attempts to distill the hope, anger, and confusion that gripped the U.S. in the late 1960s. With the civil rights movement still reeling from the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the country embroiled in the confusion of Vietnam, Senator Robert F. Kennedy's campaign preached a message of peace and tolerance. In a style similar to the sprawling works of Robert Altman or Paul Thomas Anderson, Estevez uses the June 4th, 1969, assassination of Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as the means to take a snapshot of the problems facing the country as the 1960's came to an end. The hotel is a microcosm of class and race, with characters bouncing off each other until the violent conclusion. African-American head chef Edward (Laurence Fishburne) presides over a kitchen staffed primarily by Mexican Americans who are the victims of the racist restaurant manager, Timmons (Christian Slater). Timmons is reprimanded by hotel manager Paul Ebbers (William H. Macy), who is having an affair with a switchboard operator (Heather Graham) behind the back of his beautician wife (Sharon Stone). Meanwhile, a young Diane (Lindsay Lohan) prepares to marry her classmate, William (Elijah Wood), in order to save him from going to Vietnam, and two collegiate campaigners for Senator Kennedy remove their ties to take their first LSD trip, courtesy of a resident hippie drug dealer (Ashton Kutcher). Though the sheer volume of characters--and celebrities portraying them--is often overwhelming, Estevez is deft at making each plot thread convincing and involving. Though BOBBY is not a biopic and will in no way be mistaken for the definitive statement on the man or his life and times, it is thoroughly adept at distilling both his message and the time in which he fought to deliver it. [More]
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Elijah Wood
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Elijah Wood, Harry Belafonte, Nick Cannon, Emilio Estevez, Laurence Fishburne, Heather Graham, Helen Hunt, Ashton Kutcher, Shia LaBeouf, William H. Macy
Director: Emilio Estevez
Director: Emilio Estevez
Producer: Ed Bass, Holly Wiersma
Composer: Mark Isham
Studio: Weinstein Company
Reviews for Bobby
With one film, Estevez has transformed himself from a middle-aged joke into a youthful auteur who has made something beautiful, something he can be proud of, one of the best films of 2006.
As long as you don't let "Bobby" lose you, and just sit back and adapt to its chaotic ways, you may find that it reaches past your confusion into your heart.
With so much brandishing of name actors in small roles, Bobby feels like a '70s disaster flick, with the disaster in the final minutes. While waiting, viewers must content themselves with playing spot-the-star.
Always engaging, rarely revelatory, Bobby earns credit for its convictions and its ability to dramatize those convictions in the context of a man who embodied them.
It pains me to have to slam a film that so obviously has its heart in the right place, but BOBBY is such an inept and misguided effort that there's no other option
Every isolated moment or trapping that might be excused in a better film leaps up like a cowlick that just won't behave: Demi Moore drawling through 'Louie Louie' comes to mind.
Bobby may not make the case for its messiah as much as it would like to, but on its own terms, it is a reasonably moving portrayal of a society in need of salvation.
Where the hell is our money shot of brother Charlie Sheen wearing a Hawaiian shirt with dark shades while picking up a cocktail waitress at the Cocoanut Grove?! Throw us a bone, Emilio!
Terrible, uninformative and embarrassingly amateurish in word and lensing.
It is neither sprawling nor epic, and only really “political” insomuch as it evokes a generally nostalgic desire for optimism, uplift and mutually brokered solutions.
It's a bland, pointless movie that happens to have a brilliantly emotional ending
If Robert Altman had been dropped on his head as a toddler, Bobby is the sort of movie he might have ended up making.
One of the most unflatteringly photographed movies I've seen in years. A scene between Sharon Stone and Demi Moore comes off more like a bad-facelift pageant, and Lindsay Lohan doesn't look a day over 40.
The former Brat Packer turned writer-director makes a quantum leap with this mature, well-balanced and deeply felt film. He expertly juggles the many storylines, making sure they all reflect some aspect of American life and culture at this watershed time.
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