It seems that reviews of this movie have ranked it either as Oscar caliber or on the same level as a bad episode of Love Boat. My own reaction comes down squarely in the middle. Some of the multiple storylines work better, make more sense, and are more emotionally engaging than others. I was hoping that, since the storyline involving the characters played by Elijah and Lindsay Lohan was based on real people and was actually one of the catalysts of the entire script, it would come off as one of the best; that didn't happen. It needed a gut-level link to the reality of being sent to Vietnam that it didn't have. (It'll be interesting to see if more of a chance to inhabit the character got Elijah's acting to a different place in Day Zero. We know he doesn't have to personally experience something in order to show us the character's gut-level reaction to it.) Even though Elijah's character doesn't have much screen time, if his acting would have been as good as it could have been, I'd be going back to the theater for a second viewing. As it is, I'm not planning to. This is one of the rare films where Elijah just doesn't seem to connect with the character.

That storyline wasn't the only one that suffered from being underdeveloped. There was just too much going on for there to be time for much more than showing what happened; character development lost out. I thought the one thread that rose above this was the one involving the kitchen crew (although Lawrence Fishburne's character seemed a bit too philosophical for someone who'd really been angry only a couple of months previously). About half of the multiple storylines didn't seem to have any connection, even tangentially, with Bobby or the issues involved in the politics of that year; I think those threads could have been eliminated in order to expand the more relevant storylines without hurting the movie (although it might have hurt the box office by taking a good number of the "big name" actors out of it).

When reading other reviews, I've gotten the impression that people's reaction to the movie did depend somewhat on their feelings about RFK, and I'd wondered how my own reaction would be affected by my membership in Eugene McCarthy's 1968 "Children's Crusade." There was a definite disconnect for me between the way the movie presents RFK as the peace candidate, and the fact that the vote counts it shows us don't have him pitted against Nixon, or even Humphrey, but against McCarthy. Those eager young campaign workers in the film are backing a person I saw as an opponent and as a bit of a spoiler for entering the race so late, after McCarthy had put in the effort to assemble the base of voters that RFK would appeal to. Of course, the difference between McCarthy and RFK is that RFK could possibly have won, but when you're just beginning high school your idealism doesn't leave much space for such practicalities. If I didn't remember the actual campaign so well, I might be better able to see Bobby as the symbol of all that he, and McCarthy, and a lot of other people, stood for at that time in history, which I believe (or hope) is what the film is aiming for.

This is one of those movies where everyone knows how it's going to end; even the individual storylines don't involve much suspense. The one time I held my breath was when the background music moved into the second verse of "The Sounds of Silence." I cheered a bit (almost silently) the moment I knew they'd chosen the right version of the song to use.

There's one negative comment I've seen in several reviews that I disagree with: that running RFK's speech over the closing glimpses of the characters necessarily takes attention away from either - or both. If the two are watched as a unit, with specific parts of the speech matched with the specific character shots over which they play, it makes some thought-provoking statements. This is probably too subtle to pick up completely in one viewing, and it's something I'll be looking at again when the DVD is released.

Bobby: Widescreen DVD	Bobby: Full-screen DVD