I scoffed when I heard that a woman from one of the entertainment news shows had flipped over Emilio Estevez‘s Bobby (Weinstein Co., 11.17). And I’ve written a couple of pieces expressing doubts about the likelihood that it’ll be good-good-good. (Here’s one.) But now a fellow journo-columnist has seen it and likes it a lot, and Variety‘s Deborah Young has given it a pass out of Venice so okay, maybe.
I can’t help having an attitude about it (I keep hearing that Estevez quote from John Ridley’s Esquire piece — “Checkmate, asshole!”), but at least I have higher hopes for it than, say, All The King’s Men.
This Mike Collett-White Reuters piece about Bobby‘s debut at the Venice Film Festival errs, however, in saying the film is Estevez’s “first feature film in 10 years.” He directed, wrote and starred in Rated X, his Mitchell Brothers movie, six years ago. It was a Showtime movie that didn’t go out theatrically, but it would have gone in theatres if the right distribution deal had come along. I think it’s wrong to say it wasn’t a feature — it was shot as one, and was orginally intended to be seen in theatres…it just happened to wind up on Showtime.