The Trailer Was Better Than The Movie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                        Really, it was!

                        Having to attend an evening party on Friday, I had time to kill, so I took advantage of the availability to see the movie "Chappaquiddick," which I had planned on seeing.

                          I was hoping the movie would be a big camp fest.  It acts like it wants to be taken seriously, like, say, "Spotlight," but it has neither the cast nor the class to match that A-list film.

                          This should have been entitled "Portrait Of A Loser."  Jason Clarke was much too good looking as Ted Kennedy, loser of the lot.  He gloriously conveyed the man's stupidity, arrogance, and self-centeredness, but the script lets him, and everyone, down.

                             It plays things too close to the vest.  On the one hand, it tries to have it both ways, painting Ted as both a hero and victim.  It makes mincemeat of the Kennedy boys; the last three of whom, as far as Joseph Sr. was concerned, were surrogates for his tragically killed eldest, Joseph, Jr., apparently the only one with the real capacity to fulfill his father's ambitions.  But we will never know.  The others were simply pushed forward, without any choice.  Ted makes it clear here he wanted no part of the Kennedy political scene.  It was all about pleasing Papa.

                             No way, Jose.  In the most brilliant moment of the film, Bruce Dern, in a performance that should net him another Oscar, turns to his son Teddy, and, in a stricken state, probably from a stroke, breathes out to his son, in a manner he can barely speak,  "You......will....never.....be.....great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"   Which says it pretty much for Ted, and this movie!!!!!!!!!!!  Good for you, Bruce!  The movie is worth seeing for this moment alone!!!!!!!!!!!

                             Unfortunately, no one appears, playing Jackie or Lee.  But Kate Mara, as the doomed Mary Jo Kopechne,  the actress playing her friend Rachel, and Andria Blackman, in a performance consisting of style and glares, as Ted's wife Joan, convey that while the Kennedy men, Ted especially, might have had ball sacs, there was nothing in them!  The real balls behind the Kennedys were the women!  How this movie needed more of them, and Jackie and Lee!!!!!!!!!

                               The men in this movie are like a bunch of comic buffoons.  They all seem to be running and bumping into each other constantly, like the cards at the climax of "Alice In Wonderland."  Not funny enough to be genuine, not bad enough to be campy.

                                As for Mary Jo, well, Kate Mara has the goods to deliver, but is given so little to do.  I never knew her connection to the Kennedys was through working on Bobby's campaign.  I would like to have had more of her story, because the movie plays fast and loose with her.  It does not even hint at anything sexual between she and Ted, when the real life rumor was she was pregnant, which was a reason for the "supposed" accident.  This should have been examined.  The actors playing her parents are genuinely grief stricken, but it is never shown how the Kennedys got to them, decent people who, from the face of this film, would have turned down any money offered to them.
Which was not the case.

                                 Of course, the advertisers billing this film as "Based On A True Story" is hilarious, indicating the dumbing down of America, where more than seventy five percent of the population never heard of Chappaquiddick before.

                                  The incident happened on July 18, 1969, two days before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.  Which helped eclipse the scandal, for awhile.

                                    But the shadow of scandal will always lurk over this incident.

                                    The actual truth may never be known, but, thankfully, Bruce Dern, as Joe, Sr., tells it.

                                    His son Ted sucked.  And so does the film!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!