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Set in Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel in the hours leading up to Kennedy's assassination at the hands of Sirhan Sirhan, Bobby is inspired by the 1932 Oscar winner Grand Hotel (referenced in the film) as well as by the sort of multistory TV shows Estevez grew up with (Hotel, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, heck, maybe even the short-lived Supertrain). So while Democratic staffers are busy prepping for Bobby's visit, other soggy dramas are being played out in the site's corridors and rooms. The hotel manager (William H. Macy) passes the time by cheating on his wife (Sharon Stone) with a switchboard operator (Heather Graham) and by handing walking papers to the bigoted employee (Christian Slater) in charge of kitchen operations. A Mexican busboy (Freddy Rodriguez), upset that he has to miss an important Dodgers game because he's being forced to work two consecutive shifts, finds a sympathetic ear in the philosophical cook (Laurence Fishburne). A boozy nightclub singer (Demi Moore) picks fights with her manager-husband (Estevez). A former Ambassador doorman (Anthony Hopkins) reflects on all the great leaders he greeted over the years at the front of the posh establishment. A hippie (Kutcher) sells drugs from the comfort of his hotel room. And so it goes.
The film flickers to life whenever it gets around to focusing on its title character. There are a few nice speeches about the American future that Bobby represents if he can get elected president (folks often reflect on how this country might have turned out had JFK lived, but the same can obviously be said regarding his brother), and the final portion of the picture, with Kennedy's own words being heard over the aftermath of his fateful encounter with Sirhan Sirhan, exhibits a power and poignancy missing from the rest of the movie.
Despite the impressive assemblage gathered here, few of the actors make much of an impression: The good ones (Hopkins, Macy, Fishburne) are left to drift, the bland ones (Rodriguez, Elijah Wood, Nick Cannon) fail to register, and the bad ones (Helen Hunt, Moore, Kutcher) become increasingly annoying. Only Sharon Stone, as an aging beautician stung by the words and actions of those around her, musters up anything resembling an inner life. What her struggles have to do with Robert Kennedy or the era I'm sure I don't know -- adultery and ageism are hardly issues confined to the 1960s -- but she's the only cast member worth remembering at check out time.
THE FOUNTAIN
**1/2
DIRECTED BY Darren Aronofsky
STARS Hugh Jackson, Rachel Weisz
The word from the Venice Film Festival, where The Fountain first saw the light of day, was that the latest work from writer-director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, Pi) is a dull and pretentious slice of sci-fi silliness, at once too cerebral and too slow-moving. Funny, a lot of folks once said the same thing about Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and now it's routinely considered one of the two or three greatest science fiction films ever made.
Mind you, I'm not placing The Fountain on that esteemed level, but to dismiss this out of hand is to miss the overriding passion that Aronofsky pours into every frame of his wildly uneven but always watchable epic. Perhaps inspired by his muse, real-life fiancée (and mother of his child) Rachel Weisz, Aronofsky has penned a love story that spans the centuries -- yet that's only part of the tale. The auteur has also set his sights on nothing less than matters of life and death, using his ambitious yarn to examine the manner in which death is viewed -- as a finality, as a rebirth, as a disease, as a shot at immortality. Ultimately, the film's philosophy may be no more weighty than the "Circle of Life" theory espoused by The Lion King, but because Aronofsky offers so much food for thought (and refuses to spell out anything), the film is one of those rarities that can be interpreted six different ways by six different people. The dozen other folks in the room, however, will have long thrown up their hands about 10 minutes in.
Jumping back and forth between past, present and future, the film stars Hugh Jackman as Tomas, a Spanish conquistador sent by Queen Isabel (Weisz) to locate the Tree of Life. It also casts the actor as Tommy Creo (the surname meaning "I create" in Latin and "I believe" in Spanish), a scientist working 24/7 to find a cure for his wife Izzy (Weisz again), who's dying of a brain tumor; his only hope seems to be the recuperative powers found in a piece of tree in his possession. Finally, Jackman appears as a Tom of the future (Tom Tomorrow?), a bald, 26th-century loner who travels in an orb through space with a tree that contains the spirit of his deceased beloved. Clearly, we're not in Kansas anymore.
