Grade: C+

“Bobby” is the best movie Emilio Estevez has ever made. Of course unless you’re a big fan of “Wisdom,” “Men at Work” or “The War at Home,” that doesn’t mean much. And since its ensemble, multi-story approach can best be called Altmanesque, it’s unfortunate that it’s being released just after that director’s death. Because, frankly, it’s not in the same class as Altman’s best work.

Early on, Estevez’s script has one of its myriad characters refer to “Grand Hotel,” and his picture is clearly intended as a sort of modern equivalent to that 1932 classic. It adds a political overlay to the mix, however, by situating the action on the day of the Democratic primary of 1968, in which Robert Kennedy was pitted against Eugene McCarthy, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where the Kennedy rally is scheduled for that night and, of course, Kennedy will be shot. After offering context via newsreel footage of the Vietnam War and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the film moves into fictional mode, shuffling mini-stories about a raft of twenty-plus people living out their lives “waiting for Kennedy,” as it were.

The cast of characters is a large one, and the interest attached to them varies. The most interesting segment occurs in the kitchen, where Jose (Freddy Rodriguez), a genial young Mexican-American who’s being forced by his nasty boss Timmons (Christian Slater) to work a double shift that night despite the fact that he’s got tickets to a Dodgers game in which Don Drysdale just might pitch a record-setting no-hit game–and to which he intends to take his father. Though it’s a sacrifice, Jose decides to save his job, stay for the night with his pal Miguel (Jacob Vargas) and give the tickets gratis to African-American chef Edward (Laurence Fishburne), a cantankerous but witty fellow who foresees a great future for the generous kid. There’s a warmth and genuineness to this episode, which makes its points without undue emphasis, that’s very engaging.

But everything else is more variable. That includes the story of hotel manager Paul Ebbers (William H. Macy), who fires Timmons for his racist attitude in not giving kitchen employees time off to vote, but whose affair with a telephone operator Timmons reveals to Ebbers’ beautician wife Miriam (Sharon Stone) as a parting gesture. Miriam, meanwhile, has to do the hair of chanteuse Virginia Fallon (Demi Moore), a has-been Hollywood star and alcoholic who’s singing in the hotel lounge and rejoices in humiliating her concerned husband Tim (Estevez himself). Among the denizens of the hotel is also John Casey (Anthony Hopkins), a retired doorman who spends his days in the lobby with his old buddy Nelson (Harry Belafonte). And among the non-Kennedy related guests are a young couple who are going to be married on site: Diane (Lindsay Lohan) and William (Elijah Wood), whom she’s going to wed simply to keep the young man, who’s about to be drafted, from being sent to Vietnam.

Then there are the Kennedy-ites, chief among them chief organizer Wade (Joshua Jackson), who arranges a thank-you session with the senator for loyal aide Dwayne (Nick Cannon) while fending off an interview request from an insistent Czech journalist (Svetlana Metkina). And wealthy couple Jack and Samantha Stevens (Martin Sheen and Helen Hunt), supporters who have flown into town for the anticipated victory bash. And young volunteers Cooper and Jimmy (Shia LaBeouf and Brian Geraghty), who prefer to score some drugs from dealer Fisher (Ashton Kutcher) and take their first LSD trip rather than go off on their door-knocking duties.

That’s a real host of characters to keep shifting among, and though Estevez manages to do a fairly good juggling job both as writer and director (editor Richard Chew also deserves credit), the sad fact is that apart from the kitchen episode, in which Rodriguez, Fishburne, Slater and Vargas do solid work across the board, the remaining material isn’t sufficiently compelling to merit much attention, and some of it seems either lethargic time-killer (the Hopkins-Belafonte scenes) or misfire comedy (the LaBeouf-Geraghty-Kutcher stuff). Nor do the performers have the time to invest their characters with anything but the most perfunctory traits. As a result these people don’t emerge as authentic individuals, but are rather more sketched-in types. And a few of the actors fare especially badly, especially off-screen couple Moore and Kutcher. She offers little more than a one-note portrayal of a star on the skids (stifle the smirks, people), while he, in ludicrous hippie garb, looks as though he’d just walked off the set of a bad sketch on “Saturday Night Live” and acts that way, too.

But the major problem with “Bobby” is that while it wants to say something deep about a time lost and a promise cruelly lost, it doesn’t manage to integrate its many characters and plot lines into a compelling view of the meaning and ramifications of the tragedy with which it ends. The footage of Kennedy is unquestionably moving–how could it not be?–and his words are a reminder of a time when American politicians actually spoke in something other than calculated sound-bites. But with the exception of the kitchen episode, the stories Estevez has concocted don’t contribute significantly to our understanding of the real issues of the time. There’s an arbitrariness to them that makes the picture feel more like a well-meaning exercise than a unified and powerful whole.

The result is an earnest film that shows an advance in Estevez’s filmmaking technique, but one that–given its setting–seems curiously shallow, even trivial.