The tribute drama “Bobby” is structured like the big star-studded, day-in-the-life-of pictures from Hollywood’s Golden Age like “Dinner at Eight” and “Grand Hotel.”
But despite its well-meaning purpose and marquee-busting cast, this fictionalized look at the periphery behind a fateful episode in modern history plays more like a serviceable TV movie. Through the invented point of view of minor surrounding players there that night, writer-director Emilio Estevez imagines the hours leading up to and including the assassination of Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel in the summer of 1968. The forgotten importance and inherent tragedy of that world-changing event, unfortunately, doesn’t make for a major epic event movie in this case.
