Wick's Review

Summary - Great 4.0

The Kennedys no longer occupy the white-hot center of American consciousness, as they did in the Sixties. The Kennedys, a high quality docudrama, reminds us why they held that position nearly thru the Nineties. Ultimate 1%ers, they looked, acted and misbehaved like royalty, yet became beloved by the 99%ers, who forgave them their trespasses and ached with them for their tragedies.

Fans of Mad Men shouldn’t miss this contemporaneous story. After all, the Don Drapers of the world wanted nothing more than to be Jack Kennedy.

Now available on Netflix Instant View, the eight 44 minute episodes can be watched in a six hour marathon, 5 1/2 hours if you FF through the opening and closing credits. Cue up the Sinatra.

Acting - Very Good 3.5

The three men central to our Kennedy conceptions are played extremely well by Greg Kinnear, Barry Pepper and Tom Wilkinson, as JFK, RFK and papa Joe Kennedy respectively. Kinnear nails President Kennedy’s dry wit, easy charm and ability to rise to an occasion, as with his perfect inaugural address. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country” remains the best couplet in the history of Presidential inaugurals. Kinnear delivers it well. As for Pepper, he takes on an eery resemblance to Bobby Kennedy, complete with curling lip and mercurial transitions between diffidence and attack-dog behavior. Wilkinson essays old Joe as a gimlet-eyed striver whose ambition knew no bounds.

The actresses playing the Kennedy women are more of a mixed bag. Katie Holmes looks like and carries herself well as Jackie Kennedy, though her accent often sounds more Bronx than Bouvier. Diana Hardcastle and Kristin Booth are more successful as matriarch Rose Kennedy and sister-in-law Ethel Kennedy. Booth is a revelation, lighting up the screen every time she appears, the very picture of a vivacious Kennedy.

Lots of plum parts in the sprawling narrative, most disappointingly played:

• Serge Houde as Sam Giancana, the mobster who shared a girlfriend with JFK
• Megan Vincent as that girlfriend, Judith Campbell Exner
• Jonathan Whittaker as whizkid Robert McNamara
• Don Allison as Lyndon Johnson, constantly feuding with Bobby
• Barry Flatman as an apparently fictional General who goads his younger Commander-in-Chief. Why didn’t the producers make this General Curtis LeMay?
• Dan Lett as McGeorge Bundy, another of the best and the brightest
• Enrico Colantoni as J. Edgar Hoover, who used JFK’s dalliances against him and Bobby, his boss
• Jane Moffat as Letitia Baldrige, Jackie’s social secretary
• John Bourgeois as the Dr. Feelgood who provides JFK and Jackie with pharmaceutical advantages
• Charlotte Sullivan as a very needy Marilyn Monroe
• Glen Gaston as a largely ignored Secretary of State Dean Rusk
• Frank Sinatra is played by an actor who appears to have been stricken from the credits, a well deserved banishment considering how poorly he portrays the Voice.

Film - Great 4.0

The story hews reasonably close to historical reality, zooming back-and-forth through time to show the family’s progression from faux Brahmin to faux royalty. Most of the highlights are covered: Joe Jr’s role as favored son and then his tragic death in WWII; Joe Sr’s purchase of JFK’s first election, aided by the candidate’s newfound charisma; Jackie’s entry into the family and awkwardness in it; the tragedy of Rosemary, including her lobotomy; Frank Sinatra and the mob; Marilyn Monroe; clashes between LBJ and RFK; the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis; JFK’s assassination and later RFK’s. And on and on. (The story does stop with Bobby, so no Chappaquiddick here.)

It’s been said that this is presented a la The Godfather, where family business is funny business, in this case politics. But that comparison is too facile for such a real life, multi-generational story. The Kennedys – notwithstanding their manifold faults – were America’s first family for good reasons, patriotism among them.

Edge - Risqué 2.0

JFK made Bill Clinton look like a choirboy, let there be no doubt. Drugs, drink and sex made Jack a very bad boy.

Less salacious but more challenging are the various Kennedy tragedies. The assassinations are handled discreetly, thank goodness. No leering over the fallen President’s corpse, as in Oliver Stone’s JFK. OTOH, poor Rosemary is shown post-lobotomy in a truly heartrending scene.

Reality - Glib 1.1

Today’s Kennedy family tried to stop this warts-and-all treatment from getting released, but it is compelling historical drama for the rest of us, even if it fudges the truth here and there for dramatic effect. To name two: the general advising JFK appears fictitious, perhaps because Lyman Lemnitzer wouldn’t look good in the credits; Ethel wasn’t at RFK’s side when Sirhan Sirhan gunned him down.

The larger takeaway is that the Democratic Party has moved a million miles from JFK’s Democrats and half-a-million from RFK’s more compassionate party. Hawkish, rich and tax-cutting are three qualities in bad odor with BHO’s Democrats. Leading from behind, spreading the wealth and getting the Supreme Court to label billions of dollars taken from the people as new taxes are the hallmarks of today’s Donkeys.

If Lee Harvey Oswald hadn’t shot him down, one wonders if JFK would be a Republican today. Perhaps he would’ve started a third party in his old age. He sure as hell wouldn’t want to be a 2012 Democrat.

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