Many Americans' vision of a better world ended on the night of June 5 1968 when presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy was fatally wounded by an assassin's bullet.

At a time when vast swathes of the country was crippled by industrial decline and the White House was waging an unpopular war in Vietnam, "Bobby" was regarded as their liberal saviour.

Forty years on - at a time when the country is still ravaged by poverty and an unpopular war is being fought abroad - this unashamedly nostalgic period piece revisits those days of genuine optimism.

A cast of 22 characters go about their business at LA's Ambassador Hotel - base of the Democratic Party's Californian campaign - blissfully unaware of the drama about to unfold.

They include Lohan's June bride marrying Elijah Wood to help him dodge the draft and Sharon Stone's stylist in despair after realising her hotel manager husband William H Macy has been bedding a telephonist behind her back.

Much of the playing is first-rate but the dialogue often clunks - Laurence Fishburne's embarrassing life lesson to a cynical Mexican kitchen porter sounds like an outtake from The Matrix re-written by Martin Luther King.

Essentially it's a series of vignettes delivered, you suspect, as a favour to a friend and offers little insight into a man whose beliefs offered a real possibility of social change.

Dubious comic relief is provided by a couple of campaign canvassers who get stoned courtesy of Ashton Kutcher's wacko drug dealer while Demi Moore's sot of a cabaret singer serves no useful purpose.

It's a well-intentioned movie but many of the characters are half-formed ciphers whose only purpose is to deliver carefully crafted propaganda instead of natural dialogue.

The overall tone is sombre, a bleeding heart trip down memory lane at a time when Hollywood's liberal elite have no political gods to exalt.

Tim Evans