From the creative minds behind 24 comes the rather bloated affair of The Kennedys.
Purporting to be a Godfather-style exploration of the highs and lows of one of the most powerful families in American politics, the series comes to us amid a cavalcade of Stateside controversy, with the real-life Kennedys themselves doing practically everything in their power to see that it doesn’t see the light of day. But it’s that phrase, ‘real-life’, that proves rather crucial in allaying any controversy. The Kennedys portrayed in this drama are just that: dramatic portrayals, and nothing more.
In the great tradition of on-screen presidents – from Anthony Hopkins and Frank Langhella as Nixon to Gary Sinise as Harry Truman and Josh Brolin as George W. Bush – Greg Kinnear, whilst not an exact fit in terms of looks, makes the role his own. It’s the little things that make it; from the Boston lilt in his accent to the hand gestures and the spot-on nailing of JFK’s charismatic smile, Kinnear’s performance is among the series’ highlights.
Elsewhere, there are some truly stellar performances. Tom Wilkinson is electrifying as the manipulative Joseph Kennedy Sr., a man who failed once to get into the White House and is forever trying to live out his political power fantasies through his sons. Barry Pepper is rather impressive as Robert F Kennedy, successfully channelling Wilkinson’s overbearing patriarch into a put-upon son who can seemingly never do anything right.
There are also some lovely moments scattered throughout the series. These are, for the most part, speculative smaller, familial moments between Kinnear’s JFK and his wife and children, but further on in the series, we get to see rather deft stagings of the political fallout of the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. There’s also sobering depiction of the infamous assassination that is remarkable in its disinterest in conspiracy and which we must admit was rather more moving than expected.
It’s a shame, though, that such performances and moments are more or less lost amid some fairly low-grade storytelling. The writing is at its best when it sticks closely to historical events and at its weakest when it’s conjecturing about the backroom shenanigans that may or may not have occurred behind closed doors. There’s also a couple of weak links in the cast – Katie Holmes seems perpetually out of her depth throughout, though whether this is a conscious choice or not is probably debatable, and the plethora of actors and actresses playing various historical figures is wildly inconsistent.
There’s also a rather jarring amount of bouncing between timelines – namely the events that befell the family in World War Two and its aftermath, along with JFK’s successful bid for and subsequent incumbency in the presidency in the 1960. Whilst the period details are reasonably well-presented and consistent for each, there’s an odd decision to film both in almost identical styles.
At the end of it, The Kennedys is neither particularly bad, nor particularly good. Working far more successfully as a ‘based on history’ piece of dramatics, rather than an actual recreation of historic events, it still features the aforementioned stellar performances, and if you can bare the occasionally rather amateur dramatics that unfold, then you’ll certainly be rewarded.
Released on DVD on Monday 18th July 2011 by Universal Pictures UK.
Watch the trailer…