Toronto: Day 8 (Emilio's ambitions)

Few words may chill the heart as much as the words "An Emilio Estevez movie," and many of the press went into this morning's 8:45 screening of "Bobby" with tredipidation. Set in L.A.'s Ambassador Hotel on the day Robert F. Kennedy was shot and killed there, the film marks Estevez's grab for the gold ring: huge cast, epic length, resonant subject. The man wants to be the new Altman.

Well, sorry, we already have one of those (Paul Thomas Anderson), but the news is that "Bobby" is even weirder than I could have predicted. RFK is a minor figure in the film -- he functions much as the never-seen candidate in "Nashville" does -- and the focus is on the hotel personnel and other "regular folk" on the scene that day. All of whom are played by huge Hollywood stars.

Anthony Hopkins plays the retired doorman who just can't stay at home. William H. Macy is the hotel manager having an affair with switchboard operator Heather Graham. Freddy Rodriguez ("Six Feet Under") is a busboy, Laurence Fishburne a chef. Martin Sheen and Helen Hunt are married hotel guests. Every time you turn around, there's someone else -- Lindsey Lohan and Elijah Wood as young marrieds! -- as if the filmmakers had approached casting as a game of whack-a-mole. When Shia LeBeouf, as a campaign worker looking to score, knocks on a door and behind it is Ashton Kutcher as a longhair burnout acid dealer, it becomes impossible not to laugh.

Then there's Demi Moore as the hotel's alcoholic lounge singer (the director plays her wimpy husband) who, in the film's closest approximation of a battle-of-the-titans death match, has a scene with Sharon Stone as the hotel salon stylist. It's no contest. When Moore takes a swig of her martini and bellows "We're allll whores -- some of us just get paid for it," Stone understands that the only way out alive is subtlety.