'Bobby' shows ambition, charisma

The movie's cast is full of veteran stars.
By ROGER MOORE
ORLANDO SENTINEL
Emilio Estevez's "Bobby" is like an overly ambitious history essay from that C-student who sat next to you in junior high. Nothing he's done before suggests that he's up to the material.
But the subject is Important with a capital "I." And he's loaded up with historical images and sources to back him up. So you have to take him seriously.
"Bobby" is an all-star fictionalization of the day presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was murdered in June 1968. Estevez, who tried the heavyweight anti-war drama "The War at Home" when he was in his "Mighty Ducks" heyday, deftly weaves historical footage of the boyish, idealistic campaigner, Bobby, with an old-fashioned "Love Boat" load of Hollywood types. It's not a terrible movie. But the over-reaching shows.
The retired doorman (Anthony Hopkins) still shows up at the Ambassador Hotel every day to play chess with his pal (Harry Belafonte). There's a drunken lounge singer (Demi Moore, well cast) taking out her has-been frustrations on her "kept" husband (Estevez). The Latino kitchen help bickers with the black chef (Laurence Fishburne) over who is more discriminated against.
Married socialites (Helen Hunt and Martin Sheen) work on marriage issues as they wait for the big campaign victory celebration that night -- the night of the California primary.
A couple of young campaign workers (Shia LaBeouf and Brian Geraghty) can't make themselves go door to door, rounding up voters. They'd rather get stoned with a hippie (Ashton Kutcher). An idealistic girl (Lindsay Lohan) is about to marry a friend (Elijah Wood) to save him from going to Vietnam.
And there's the racially insensitive food service manager (Christian Slater) at odds with his liberal boss (William H. Macy), who is married to a hotel beautician (Sharon Stone) and cheating on her with a telephone operator (Heather Graham).
More like speeches
As "types," they don't so much interact as make speeches that sound like position papers. On equal rights, the chef is sanguine.
"White folks like to think it's their idea."
Busboys Miguel and Jose take issue with the idea that they crossed the border illegally. "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us."
Little moral allegories pepper the script. A chess match leads the old ex-doorman (Hopkins) to intone, "When you make a move out of frustration and anger, it always results in disaster."
It's a tin-eared movie in many regards, history rewritten by that inner C-student who tries to jam too many footnotes into every character. But many of the acting moments, for instance scenes between Estevez and Moore (who used to be a couple), click. Fishburne, LaBeouf (over the top) and Hopkins acquit themselves admirably. Estevez's dad, Sheen, just seems "right" here, having played both John F. and Robert F. Kennedy on the screen.
Lohan reminds us that very young women made that very choice her character did, way back when, as an act of humanity, political protest and sexual liberation. Estevez manages to give a sense of a time (38 years ago), of rising hope and a shattered sense of loss through his characters. And the real Kennedy footage, nicely chosen, well-used, captures the charisma that drew young people to him by the thousands.