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Movies / On DVD / Bobby
Bobby

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Bobby (2006)

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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.

Runtime: 2 hrs

Genre: Dramas

Theatrical Release:Nov 17, 2006 Limited

Box Office: $11,098,707

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

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Release:

Apr 10, 2007

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Reviews for Bobby

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101 - 120 (sorted by date)
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If Bobby causes us to stop and compare what might have been to the leadership we currently have, one suspects Estevez would not mind at all.

Full Review Source: Detroit Free Press | comment Comment
11/22/06
Terry Lawson
Terry Lawson
Detroit Free Press
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Estevez doesn't seem to have anything to offer beyond a sweet, unquestioning admiration of RFK and the history homework he obviously did about the trappings of the time.

Full Review Source: Contra Costa Times | comment Comment
11/22/06
Mary F. Pols
Mary F. Pols
Contra Costa Times

A daring, messy and strangely rewarding patchwork that's straining at the seams.

Full Review Source: Chicago Tribune | comment Comment
11/22/06
Jessica Reaves
Jessica Reaves
Chicago Tribune

An earnest film that shows an advance in Estevez's filmmaking technique, but one that--given its setting--seems curiously shallow, even trivial.

Full Review Source: One Guy's Opinion | comment Comment
11/22/06
Frank Swietek
Frank Swietek
One Guy's Opinion

For the last four decades of racism, sexism and any other ism, we, apparently, have only an assassin to blame.

Full Review Source: Metromix.com | comment Comment
11/22/06
Matt Pais
Matt Pais
Metromix.com

Bobby shows how some people's problems become small and insignificant in the face of momentous events. But in so doing, the movie reveals itself to be small and insignificant, too.

Full Review Source: Salt Lake Tribune | comment Comment
11/22/06
Sean Means
Sean Means
Salt Lake Tribune

Featuring 22 characters in a movie leaves little time to explore their subplots, and since they're played by A-list celebrities, we see the stars and not the characters.

Full Review Source: ReviewExpress.com | comment Comment
11/22/06
Diana Saenger
Diana Saenger
ReviewExpress.com

A preachy, liberal-courting slog.

Full Review Source: Lessons of Darkness | comment Comment
11/22/06
Nick Schager
Nick Schager
Lessons of Darkness

The characters are fictional but their hopes and dreams are real enough, and every role is well-acted, even by lightweights like Lohan and Kutcher.

Full Review Source: EricDSnider.com | comment Comment
11/22/06
Eric D. Snider
Eric D. Snider
EricDSnider.com

In the film's most prophetic bit of unintentional hilarity, Estevez literally walks off his own movie and passes the torch directly to Sirhan Sirhan for mop-up duty.

Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | comment Comment
11/21/06
Erik Childress
Erik Childress
eFilmCritic.com

A powerful, poignant movie and its ending -- played over a long excerpt of one of RFK's most compassionate speeches, voiced with none of the cliches of political rhetoric -- was, for me, the movie year's single most devastating sequence.

Full Review Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer | comment Comment
11/21/06
William Arnold
William Arnold
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

All the actors get their Big Moments, but verisimilitude goes out the window.

Full Review Source: Newsweek | comment Comment
11/21/06
David Ansen
David Ansen
Newsweek
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Estevez has crafted an indelible portrait of a great man who, to many of us, is never thought of as anything but the brother of another dead Kennedy.

Full Review Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel | comment Comment
11/21/06
Phoebe Flowers
Phoebe Flowers
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

There are important movies and engrossing movies, but it's not often that both terms apply to the same movie. Bobby, which opens Thursday, is a fictionalized account of the day Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, and it's one of the exceptions.

Full Review Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune | comment Comment
11/21/06
Jeff Strickler
Jeff Strickler
Minneapolis Star Tribune

[S]ublime... so simple and so luminously powerful, so beautifully capturing the emotions of a moment in time...

Full Review Source: Flick Filosopher | comment Comment
11/21/06
MaryAnn Johanson
MaryAnn Johanson
Flick Filosopher

Despite the clunkiness, Estevez's commitment to his father's generation's idealism (and its murder) commands respect.

Full Review Source: New York Magazine | comment Comment
11/20/06
David Edelstein
David Edelstein
New York Magazine
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Estevez has made a vague gesture at a large, metaphoric structure without having the dramatic means to achieve it.

Full Review Source: New Yorker | comment Comment
11/20/06
David Denby
David Denby
New Yorker
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Bobby does do a solid job of telling one generation what the world was like in the summer of 1968, and reminding another generation of a time when they believed a politician could change the world.

Full Review Source: Ebert & Roeper | comment Comment
11/20/06
Richard Roeper
Richard Roeper
Ebert & Roeper
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Estevez deftly weaves a stories of ordinary Americans into aglorious tapestry, activities and conversations occurring onthe day Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.

Full Review Source: Compuserve | comment Comment
11/19/06
Harvey S. Karten
Harvey S. Karten
Compuserve

One of the year's best pictures, an unforgettable motion picture experience with an outstanding cast that shines brightly right down to the smallest part.

Full Review Source: Maxim | comment Comment
11/19/06
Pete Hammond
Pete Hammond
Maxim
 
 
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