| Bobby | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Emilio Estevez |
| Written by | Emilio Estevez |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring | See Cast |
| Cinematography | Michael Barrett |
| Edited by | Richard Chew |
| Music by | Mark Isham |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 116 minutes[2] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $14 million[3] |
| Box office | $20.7 million[4] |
Bobby is a 2006 Americandrama film written and directed byEmilio Estevez, and starring anensemble cast featuringHarry Belafonte,Joy Bryant,Nick Cannon,Laurence Fishburne,Spencer Garrett,Helen Hunt,Joshua Jackson,Anthony Hopkins,Ashton Kutcher,Shia LaBeouf,Lindsay Lohan,William H. Macy,Demi Moore,Martin Sheen,Christian Slater,Sharon Stone,Freddy Rodriguez,Heather Graham,Mary Elizabeth Winstead,Elijah Wood,David Krumholtz and Estevez. The screenplay is a fictionalized account of the hours leading up to the June 5, 1968,shooting of U.S. SenatorRobert F. Kennedy in the kitchen of theAmbassador Hotel in Los Angeles following his victory in the1968 Democratic presidential primary in California. The film was produced byThe Weinstein Company andBold Films and distributed byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer (throughMGM Distribution Co.) and premiered at theToronto International Film Festival on September 14, 2006 before being released theatrically on November 17, 2006. The film received mixed reviews from critics.
The film recreates the ambiance of the era and invokes the hopes inspired by Kennedy through the use of actual broadcast and newsfilm footage of thesenator intercut with dramatic sequences involving mostly fictional characters. It uses an ensemble plot device similar to that employed in the 1932 filmGrand Hotel and byRobert Altman inNashville.
The characters include John Casey, a retired hotel doorman who spends his days in the lobby playing chess with his friend Nelson; Diane, who is marrying her friend William with the hope his marital status will get himdeployed to amilitary base in Germany rather than thebattlefields of Vietnam when histour of duty begins; Virginia Fallon, an alcoholic singer whose career is on the downswing, her put-upon husband/manager Tim, and her agent Phil; Miriam Ebbers, a beautician who works in the hotel salon, and her husband Paul, the hotel manager, who is having an affair withswitchboard operator Angela; food and beverage manager Daryl Timmons, whose racist attitude gets him fired; African Americansous chef Edward Robinson andMexican Americanbusboys José and Miguel; hotel coffee shop waitress Susan; Jimmy and Cooper, Kennedy campaign volunteers who are sidetracked by anacid trip they take with the help of drug dealer Fisher; married socialites and campaign donors Samantha and Jack; campaign manager Wade and staffer Dwayne, who is in love with Angela's colleague, Patricia; andCzechoslovak reporter Lenka Janáčková, who is determined to get an interview with Kennedy.
At the end of the film, Kennedy is shot after giving his acceptance speech. A man namedSirhan Sirhan would be convicted of the assassination. After being shot, Kennedy is cradled and protected by Jose until help arrives. As Kennedy's speech "On the Mindless Menace of Violence", delivered in 1968 to theCity Club ofCleveland, Ohio, is played over the aftermath, the film shows that Samantha, Daryl, Cooper, Jimmy and William are among those also injured by Sirhan's wild firing. Sirhan is apprehended, while Kennedy is rushed into an ambulance (as are the others eventually), and everyone else is moved by the events that have just occurred. Closing titles reveal that Kennedy died of his injuries the following morning with his wifeEthel at his side, and the other victims of the shooting survived.
InBobby: The Making of an American Epic, screenwriter/directorEmilio Estevez discusses the problems he had developing his script. Suffering fromwriter's block, he checked into a motel inPismo Beach where he hoped, free from interruption, he could make some headway with his writing. While talking to the woman working at the front desk, he discovered she had been in the Ambassador Hotel on the evening Kennedy was shot, and later married two young men to help them avoid the draft. Estevez used her experience to mold the character of Diane, and the rest of the story fell into place.
The five other characters "shot" in the assassination scene do not coincide with the five actual victims—William Weisel ofABC News, Paul Schrade of theUnited Auto Workers union, Democratic Party activist Elizabeth Evans, Ira Goldstein of the Continental News Service and 17-year-old Kennedy campaign volunteer Irwin Stroll.[5] The only other character based on a real person is busboy José, who represents Juan Romero, the young man who was photographed cradling Kennedy's body immediately after he was shot. The character of José has tickets to theLos Angeles Dodgers game in whichDon Drysdale is expected to set the record of six consecutiveshutouts, but is obliged to work a double shift, forcing him to miss the game. Drysdale did, in fact, achieve his sixth shutout on June 4, 1968, and was congratulated by Kennedy during the victory speech Kennedy delivered just before being shot.[6]
Thefilm score was composed byMark Isham, with "Never Gonna Break My Faith" written byBryan Adams and performed byAretha Franklin,Mary J. Blige, and theBoys Choir of Harlem, which was played during the closing credits. Also, a newly recorded version of "Louie Louie" was performed in character byDemi Moore for the film.
Songs heard throughout the film consist of a music compilation from the 1960s, including "The Tracks of My Tears" bySmokey Robinson & The Miracles, "I Was Made to Love Her" byStevie Wonder, "Ain't That Peculiar" byMarvin Gaye, an original acoustic version of "The Sound of Silence" bySimon & Garfunkel, "Anji" covered by Jason Huxley, "Come See About Me" byThe Supremes, "There's a Kind of Hush" byHerman's Hermits, "Black Is Black" byLos Bravos, "Season of the Witch" and "Hurdy Gurdy Man" byDonovan, "Wives and Lovers" byJack Jones, "Magic Moments" byPerry Como, "Pata Pata" byMiriam Makeba and "Initials" from the musicalHair.
The soundtrack albumBobby featuresThe Supremes,Shorty Long,Hugh Masekela,The Moody Blues and Los Bravos.[7]
After an initialpremiere at the NUIG Student Cinema at theNational University of Ireland, Galway, the film premiered at theVenice Film Festival and was shown at theDeauville Film Festival, the2006 Toronto International Film Festival, theVienna International Film Festival, theLondon Film Festival, andAFI Fest before going into limited release in the US on November 17, 2006, and a wide release in the subsequent week.[citation needed] Playing on two screens, it grossed $69,039 during its opening weekend. It eventually earned $11,242,801 in North America and $9,461,790 in other territories for a worldwide box office of $20,704,591.[4]
As of April 2021[update],Bobby has an approval rating of 47% onRotten Tomatoes based on 173 reviews, with anaverage score of 5.6/10. The consensus states, "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."[8] The film also has a score of 54 out of 100 onMetacritic, based on 31 critics, indicating mixed or average reviews.[9] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average score of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[10]
A. O. Scott ofThe New York Times wrote that despite the director's "large and honorable task" and "entirely admirable" intentions, "The actors seem more like 'very special guest stars' than like real, 1968-vintage Americans ... Some of the stories feel too obviously melodramatic, while others are vague to the point of inscrutability. In the Vietnam- and drug-related plots, the point is hammered home too hard ... while other narratives wind toward no discernible point at all. Nonetheless, the ambition behindBobby is large and serious."[11]
Kevin Crust of theLos Angeles Times called it "an ambitious film drenched in sincerity and oozing with nostalgia that, despite the energy provided by its title icon via archival footage, falls flat dramatically in nearly every other way. It aspires for theAltmanesque interplay ofNashville orShort Cuts but instead feels like one of those '70s disaster epics such asEarthquake orThe Towering Inferno, in which a star-studded cast endures melodramatic story lines as the audience awaits the inevitable momentous event and tries to guess who will be around at the finish ... It's easy to become swept up in the palpable enthusiasm Estevez shows toward his subject, but the pedestrian and overly expositional dialogue of the film's characters proves to be as stifling as the excerpts from Kennedy's speeches are stirring."[12]
Deborah Young ofVariety said of Estevez, "Stepping up as writer and director in a way he never has before, [he] successfully pulls together a complexly designed narrative", and added the film "carries an eerie topicality that makes many of its insights instantly click."[13]Armond White ofNew York Press wrote that the film "has a humane sweetness", and that it "literally and vividly unites different ethnic groups, labor strata and social castes" in a way that "is not schematic—its exactitude and believability has a Tocquevillian brilliance."[14]
Steve Persall of theSt. Petersburg Times graded the film C, calling it "a misguided jumble of too much fiction, few facts and zero speculation" and Estevez "a mediocre filmmaker".[15]Michael Medved, who was in the Ambassador ballroom (20 feet from the podium) the night Kennedy was shot, awarded the film three out of four stars and called it "intriguing but imperfect". He added, "Emilio Estevez gets most of the feelings of the occasion right. But, the melodramatic, multi-character format proves somewhat uneven and distracting."[16]
Richard Roeper said, "Estevez writes and directs with lots of passion, not so much subtlety ... [He] wants the movie to be on the level of a Robert Altman film likeNashville but falls short."[17]Peter Travers ofRolling Stone gave the film one star and called it "trite fiction" and a work of "insipid ineptitude". He ranked it among the worst films of 2006, as did Lou Lumerick of theNew York Post, who dubbed it an "ambitious, but utterly wrong-headed trivialization."[18]
| Award | Nominee | Status |
|---|---|---|
| ALMA Award for Outstanding Motion Picture | Bobby | Nominated |
| ALMA Award for Outstanding Director | Nominated | |
| ALMA Award for Outstanding Screenplay | Nominated | |
| Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Cast | Nominated | |
| Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture — Drama | Nominated | |
| Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song | "Never Gonna Break My Faith" byBryan Adams,Eliot Kennedy, and Andrea Remanda | Nominated |
| Hollywood Film Festival Award for Best Ensemble Cast | Bobby | Won |
| Hollywood Film Festival Award for Best Breakthrough Actress | Lindsay Lohan | Won |
| NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture | Harry Belafonte | Nominated |
| Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Breakout Performance of the Year — Director | Bobby | Won |
| Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture | Nominated | |
| Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Actress — Drama | Lindsay Lohan | Nominated |
| Venice Film Festival Biografilm Award | Emilio Estevez | Won |
| Venice Film Festival Golden Lion | Nominated |
{{cite web}}:|archive-url= is malformed: timestamp (help)CS1 maint: url-status (link)Authority control databases: National |
|---|
