The Weinstein Company

Sharon Stone, William H. Macy, Elijah Wood and Lindsay Lohan

Vietnam, LSD, Motown, Martin Luther King Jr.: They're all present and accounted for in Bobby, a multicharacter mosaic that unfolds on June 4, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel, the day and place Robert Kennedy was assassinated after winning the California Democratic primary. At times the movie feels like a dramatization of the '60s brought to you by Time Life Books, with all of the decade's greatest hits and lowest lows wrapped up under one roof by a star-studded cast. Indeed, the myriad plotlets and abundance of recognizable faces give Bobby the air of a quality TV movie.

But Bobby isn't so easy to dismiss, even when it practically dares you to do just that, even when the drama comes too easily and the pieces show little inclination to click together. The epiphany hits home near the end, after the assassination, during the emotional surge that accompanies genuine tragedy. We hear a recording of the real Bobby talking about his vision for an America defined by equality and civic greatness, a country that meets its highest stated ideals. We look back at the characters that represent, with varying degrees of dramatic relevance, the struggle for those ideals. It all creates a potent combination of deep loss, regret and hope.

This isn't a great movie; writer and director Emilio Estevez, who also has one of the movie's seemingly infinite number of speaking parts, is more ambitious and earnest than visionary. But Bobby's guilelessness, and its insistence on telling the stories of regular folks (kitchen workers, campaign volunteers) creates a likable, ground-level feel that compensates for larger flaws.

The script has a way of telling you what to think or feel. "Now that Dr. King is gone, there's no one left but Bobby," says a young campaign volunteer played by Nick Cannon. Too many of the characters come off as two-dimensional in the ensemble scheme, which rushes from character to character like a politician eager to shake as many hands as possible.

And boy, are there a lot of hands to shake. The cast includes (deep breath): Laurence Fishburne, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Harry Belafonte, Heather Graham, William H. Macy, Christian Slater, Sharon Stone, Lindsay Lohan, Elijah Wood, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Martin Sheen and others. Some of these famous folks, including Mr. Hopkins as a hotel elder and Mr. Fishburne as a stoic chef who keeps his anger in check, are quite good. But it can get difficult to concentrate on the stories when Bobby runs the risk of becoming an epic game of Spot the Celebrity.

Bobby works best when it encapsulates the ideals and concerns of its title character. When tensions simmer in the kitchen between two Latinos (Freddy Rodriguez and Jacob Vargas) flush with ethnic pride and Mr. Fishburne's wise chef, we're gently reminded of the period's racial strife. And when the gap is bridged by a pair of Dodgers tickets – Don Drysdale is going for his sixth straight shutout that night – the moment feels more warm than hokey.

Always engaging, rarely revelatory, Bobby earns credit for its convictions and its ability to dramatize those convictions in the context of a man who embodied them. In showing a cross-section of Americans trying to do better, by themselves and their beliefs, it asks us to continue this simple but always elusive task. Bobby isn't about Bobby. It's about what was lost when he was gunned down, and why it will never vanish entirely.