Tuesday

I've been hearing about Bobby since last year, and have been eager to see it. It sounded good. But, sadly, I think this film serves best as an example of how not to make a movie with interweaving story lines. Many have already said that it resembles Magnolia and some Robert Altman films. The problem is that its stories, situations and characters are not very compelling, the dilemmas they are facing are not that interesting or relevant. It's hard to empathise or engage with most of them. The plot of the two students taking LSD for the first time, whilst getting a lot of laughs, is completely distracting. Demi Moore's character is uninteresting, overplayed and already overdone in cinema. I didn't see the point at all in Martin Sheen and Helen Hunt's scenario, let alone Anthony Hopkins'. Overall, the thing becomes rambling and disjointed, although the music is good in spots. The interlacing of real TV footage disconcerted me at times. And when we come to the inevitable Aimee Mann moment (ie, music montage of panning cameras around everyone having their solitary moments of anguish) we are just not moved enough for it to matter. The crescendo that it builds to is much more shocking than in Magnolia, but again the real TV footage put me off. Still, if Emilio Estevez is going to make anymore films I'd be very interested to see them - his creation of a moment in time is convincing.

(I saw this at the Odeon Panton Street.)