One day at the former Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, the fateful day of June 4, 1968, when Bobby Kennedy, on the campaign trail, was going for the votes in the California Primary, and Don Drysdale, on the mound for the Dodgers, was going for the record of consecutive scoreless innings pitched. A tapestry of lives, from the Mexican menials in the kitchen to the Hollywood headliner in the showroom, woven together in the pattern of Grand Hotel, which is explicitly referenced in the dialogue, or just plain Hotel, which had been released the previous year, 1967. Director (and democratic role player) Emilio Estevez, who was six years old at the time, churns up a lather of nostalgia for political idealism, seemingly missing, now, in a parallel time of an unpopular foreign war. The seriousness of intent does not lessen the hokeyness, though, and the politics tend to load down the soap operatics at least as much as the soap operatics lighten and cheapen the politics. Solid contributions from William H. Macy as the hotel manager, a self-proclaimed "equal opportunity kind of guy," Anthony Hopkins as the retired doorman who still haunts the premises daily, Laurence Fishburne as the head chef, Freddy Rodriguez as a humble kitchen worker with tickets to the big game, and Martin Sheen, the filmmaker's famously Left-leaning father. Among others. All of the women "of a certain age" — Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Helen Hunt — exhibit identical gaunt elongated faces, in the Mannerist manner, that appear to have come through the same plastic surgeon's office and spoil the illusion of a period piece. And Ashton Kutcher in a headband and a House-of-Stuart wig looks like a Halloween hippie. Liberal masochists who simply crave an occasion to relive the day, however, will get what they need, especially in the newsreel footage of Kennedy on the stump, and in the agonizingly drawn-out re-enactment of his death, and in the final reprise of one of his eloquent speeches, in which he sounds, first, as if he knows and understands what he's saying, and, second, as if he means it. Wouldn't it be swell to have a President like that? With Heather Graham, Lindsay Lohan, Elijah Wood, Christian Slater, Nick Cannon, Harry Belafonte. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd