by Thomas M. Pender
While I tend to scoff at people who are fascinated and/or obsessed with “the royals,” I must admit I’m a bit of a Kennedyphile, which pretty much amounts to the same thing in American terms. It’s not that I’m a fan of the clan, who were simultaneously the most successful and the most cursed family in our nation’s history. No, “fan” is not the right word. I guess it’s just amazing to me that so much right and wrong could dwell among and happen to the members of a single family.
As an interested party, I do seek out and absorb all the information I can on John, Bobby, Jackie, Teddy, Joseph and their ginormous family tree. If there is a movie, book or miniseries about the turbulent lives of these people, I’ll at least give it a look. Sometimes, this garners me even more interesting facts on the clan . . . and sometimes this is a tremendous waste of time.
Available on DVD, the 1983 TV miniseries Kennedy, starring Martin Sheen as the 35th President, is a good example of a great show, in terms of acting, research and writing, for anyone’s who’s interested. Today, however, the topic is the more recent (as in 2011) cable miniseries The Kennedys, with Greg Kinear as JFK.
The show does have quite a bit of positive in it: Kinnear does a respectable job as John, taking on the Boston accent, the hair and the furrowed brow. Barry Pepper, a personal Hollywood favorite of mine, does well as burdened brother Teddy, though for some reason (probably to cover the very un-Bobby twist in Pepper’s nose), this Bobby has quite the distracting proboscis. Katie Holmes shocked me a bit by doing a decent job as Jackie. I suppose I figured she wasn’t ready to handle this kind of serious drama, but she did. In the acting category, the only real eyesore is Tom Wilkinson as corrupt ringleader and patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy. Wilkinson is a great talent, to be sure, but he looks to be at least one human head taller than the real Joe, about 75 pounds heavier, and he seems to be trying to act the part, rather than just acting it.
The worst element, however, is the writing. Totaling just eight hours, and attempting to cover 1960-68, with numerous flashbacks going back to the very early 20th Century, every historic scene seems rather rushed. Compared to the ’83 Kennedy, this gives us less information in twice the airtime. There also doesn’t seem to be any new information here. If you know very little about the Kennedy years, you can learn something from this show, but if you were alive and had a television or a newspaper subscription back then, this will just seem like a very fast newsreel. Since the Kennedys have been so overly researched, analyzed, judged and publicized over the years, I would think that any further attempts to dramatize them would at least have a fresh angle, or at least a few shocking previously-uncovered facts. This offers none.
The worst element of the worst element is the syrupy-sugary-sweet tying up of loose ends in scenes that could never possibly have taken place, given the characters of these real people. Jack promising Jackie he’s going to be a better husband, just an hour before he’s killed. LBJ (who loathed the Kennedys) telling Jackie that the White House won’t be the same without her in it. By the final episode, I was physically scoffing and rolling my eyes at these fairytale endings.
If you don’t know much about the Kennedy years and family and you’re interested, look into the Sheen show. Whether you already know something about the clan or are looking to learn, The Kennedys will teach you nothing.
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