And so we get Christian Slater as a racist kitchen chief, and in a turn that will no doubt inspire a thousand drag routines, Demi Moore Judy Garlanding her way through her role as a martini-marinated lounge singer, complete with raven fright wig and teary alkie weeps. Sharon Stone and Helen Hunt show up in way too much eye shadow as, respectively, a wise hotel hairdresser and a possibly deranged socialite married to wealthy East Coast dude Martin Sheen, who's in therapy because being rich isn't everything.
What it is about these types that's particularly '60s is anyone's guess—mainly, they show that Estevez doesn't get beyond the 90210 ZIP code enough. Just as bad are those who do seem period-appropriate, if only in the sense that Estevez has compiled a checklist of types he's seen in '60s movies. And so we get Harry Belafonte as a cynical black guy who's seen it all, and Laurence Fishburne, nominally playing the sage sous chef but really performing a counterculture Morpheus as he Zen-ishly takes it from The Man in patient wait of The Revolution.
Freddy Rodríguez and Jacob Vargas, meanwhile, play kitchen Latinos who mix talking-point arguments about immigration with a uniting passion for the Dodgers as a way to demonstrate that Hispanics are regular folks too. The less said the better about the Democratic operative played by Nick Cannon—whose only job seems to be waiting for his white leader to give him a job—and his romance with Joy Bryant's switchboard operator. (Oh, how conservatives will relish the feckless, Hollywood-elite/Crash-style passive racism here.)
As if suddenly aware that a movie about the killing of one of America's last decent, idealistic politicians might be depressing, Estevez indulges a magnificently ill-advised foray into comedy, as Brian Geraghty and Shia LaBeouf play Democratic operatives who cop acid from Kutcher's hippie dealer, resulting in the two squares tripping out naked amidst the cosmos in a closet (really). Meanwhile, Anthony Hopkins plays an apolitical doorman whose presence is best explained by the fact that he executive-produced the film.
As mentioned, the only drama is provided by Lohan, playing a sweet girl of unknown origin who's marrying a nice guy (Elijah Wood) so he doesn't have to go to Iraq—er, Vietnam. (As always in Bobby, Estevez hammers the glaring parallels between Then and Now.) Meanwhile, everyone is forced to mouth lines written in a stilted approximation of period argot.
Oh. Right. Bobby Kennedy. He was a master of idealistic oratory, but it's hard to parse what the man—seen and heard in TV footage and radio speeches—is talking about, what with the distracting spectacle of, say, a beehived Lohan weeping. And that lives-were-forever-changed thing? There's no answer or insight, just another RFK speech played as people cry and a soul ballad mourns. While only the least-demanding boomers will manage not to be bored silly by this, it's depressing that the takeaway for under-40 viewers will most likely be: He was a great guy. He was killed. People were sad. Bobby deserves so much better, it's a crime.