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Dear Film Studio Bigwigs:
I’m writing to beg you to stop green-lighting ensemble films. Please, please stop. I know they were all the rage for a while there. I even liked some of them. In fact, Crash was one of the few Best Picture winners that I actually thought deserved the Oscar. But you can have too much of a good thing, my dear Bigwigs. And I’ve had too much.
Take, for instance, Emilio Estevez’s new movie, Bobby. Technically, it’s supposed to be about the day in 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed in the Ambassador Hotel following his California presidential primary win. But the movie isn’t actually about RFK. Sure, there are references here and there. There’s some archive footage. But Bobby is actually about the ensemble cast and their day at the hotel. There’s Martin Sheen and a skeletal Helen Hunt as a random couple staying in the hotel. We don’t really know who they are, but we know she needs new black shoes. There’s William H. Macy as the hotel’s manager, who’s married to the hotel’s stylist (played by Sharon Stone), but he’s having an affair with one of the hotel’s switchboard operators (Heather Graham). There’s Christian Slater as the racist guy who manages the hotel’s kitchen, which seems to be run by Laurence Fishburne. There’s Demi Moore as a washed-up singer and Emilio Estevez as her downtrodden husband. There’s Lindsay Lohan as a girl who’s about to get married to save her soon-to-be husband (Elijah Wood) from being sent to the front lines. There’s Anthony Hopkins as the former doorman who spends his day sitting around, playing chess with Harry Belafonte. And, finally, there are two kids who spend the day tripping on acid, thanks to Ashton Kutcher.
Actually, there are others, too, but I don’t want to take up too much of your time in explaining it—despite the fact that I had to spend two hours of my time trying to figure it all out.
I really did think that Bobby could be a good movie. I mean, look at the names on that cast list! (Though, hindsight being 20/20, I now realize that the inclusion of Lindsay Lohan and Ashton Kutcher should have tipped me off that something was awry.) But here’s the thing: there are so many names on that impressive cast list that no one actually knows anything about any one of the characters. I didn’t care about a single character in the movie—because I didn’t have enough time to care. In my description of the movie, I listed 16 characters. Do the math with me here. That gives each of them only 7.5 minutes to matter to the people watching. That’s not nearly enough. In the end, the whole film is just a confusing jumble of big-name stars who do very little. Sure, it held my attention, for the most part—but I had to pay attention just to try to figure out what was going on. And that doesn’t mean I was enjoying myself.
For a while, the whole ensemble thing worked—because it was new and different. But it’s not new anymore, nor is it different. It’s actually getting to be a bit tacky—kind of like those guys who never stopped wearing acid-wash jeans. And it’s just getting out of hand. I bet if you looked into it, you’d find a bunch of directors betting on who can get the most stars to appear in their movie. But now’s the time to put an end to it. It’s time to get back to the way things used to be, when stars made way too much money and supporting roles went to former models and has-beens—not to mention all those starlets who slept with the studio bigwigs to get into a picture. And that’s a win-win situation, don’t you think? I sure do.
Sincerely,
Kristin Dreyer Kramer
P.S. It couldn’t hurt if you stopped making movies with Ashton Kutcher and Lindsay Lohan in them, too. Thanks.
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