Chappaquiddick (2018)

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Best movie ever!

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

I'll be brutally honest on this one: I never heard of this incident or that Ted Kennedy before, so I'll refer to the film objectively, free of any animosity. Chappaquiddick is boring, plain and simple (and the makeup of the main actor is ominous). A 106 minutes story about an incident of a handful of seconds, 106 minutes of my life that I lost forever.

My wife and I watched this at home on DVD from a Redbox rental. We both were young adults when the depicted events happened and as such enjoyed the visual story and depictions of what all transpired.The movie covers just one week in the life of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, younger brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy. The story is an irony of sorts, JFK may be best known for his early 1960s declaration that we would land on the moon before the end of the decade, and we did in July 1969, the same week that younger brother Ted was involved in the accident that resulted in his losing his chance to become President. Fame and shame for the Kennedy family in the same week in 1969.Jason Clarke is really effective as Ted Kennedy, portrayed as a somewhat spoiled man of a rich family, when he needed something done he expected others to do it for him, promptly. From my own perspective, as a citizen watching Ted Kennedy, I believe it was in the best interests of our country that he did not become president.Kate Mara is effective as Mary Jo Kopechne, although her role is rather brief. The filmmakers claim their research and input from those in the know resulted in a very accurate depiction of that week, and it comes across that way. A rather large political machine spinning the events in a way to reduce the political impact on Kennedy. A quick inquest and arraignment was followed by Kennedy pleading guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, he served no jail time, was on parole for a year, and was reelected as Senator.

First, there are facts, and there is reality. The facts give a broad bound on what occurred in a given situation, but anyone who has ever watched a trial knows that the facts can be spun in very different ways to further someone's intent.You can tell by briefly scanning through the reviews here that there are many reviews by the same person, saying the same things, often in the same words, the exact copy ... and all of those kind of reviews I found we all 9 or 10 out of 10 reviews. That says, those reviews are fake, but it also says that IMDB has a terrible problem with trolls and sock puppets here to promote their political purposes. Whether these people are Alt-Right America haters, or Russian American haters, the one thing they certainly are is fairness and justice and truth haters.The intent here is to smear and character assassinate a man who is dead and gone and cannot defend himself ... and should not have to. In a way this reminds me of the Woody Allen scandal where if someone were to make a movie of it, they would make it to appeal to one side or the other of the controversy, and then cherry pick the facts used to spin it to their purpose, and leave out of distort other facts.No one knows for sure what happened, but a lot of people view this in light of the world today ... that is, where Emergency Services are dependable and just a cell phone dial away. Maybe you have to be old enough to remember walking a mile in an emergency to get to a pay phone. Another thing is the ubiquity of highway lighting we have today in almost all but the most remote areas, or the standardization of reflective warning signage. Driving out over black water in the middle of the night was a different experience in the 60's.And accident in a car was also different. Most cars had just gotten seat belts and there were no seat belt laws and most people did not bother to use their seat-belts. Safety class was also not so technologically developed. Imagine being in an accident and how having all your wits about your either because you were tired or tipsy or both, had hard it would be to save yourself, let along look back in the dark and the water and try to see without a face mask and try to save someone in a heightened state of fear and exhaustian. Add to that the thought that your whole life might be ruined, and trying to guess what is the right to thing to do.In the Blink, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how when your adrenalin is pumping you go mind blind, he called it, and you cannot think straight.What Kennedy was guilty of is bad judgement of driving while drinking, and that was completely a different world back in those days. I don't even think it was illegal in my state of Texas, or it had just recently been outlawed that is what a different world 1969 was. The rest of what happenedThere were 55,000 traffic deaths in 1969, in 2007 there were 41,000. It was a different world, and whatever world this movie was in it was politically biased and ugly one where the right-wing is so rich they can make hack movies like this one and attack a man's whole life because of one mistake, distorted by lies and judged by a situation that people born today cannot really put in valid perspective when faced with the immediacy of a movie.Don't watch this movie, don't contribute money to the cause that made this movie, and do not watch movies that the actors who participated in this movie star in in the future. Stand against this kind of disgusting political manipulation, and fake news.

Anything involving the Kennedy's becomes surrounded by mystery and intrigue, especially the men. The JFK and RFK murders have been and continue to be wrought with conspiracy theories or other implications and the Chappaquiddick event is no different. Ted Kennedy did draw sympathy for having to endure the murders of his beloved brothers for his entire life. But he would also have Chappaquiddick hanging over his head for his remaining political life and even following his own death. Now that the movie is finally out, I would say it was cleverly done not to show too much bias. It is what it is, or it was what it was, a girl died negligently at the age of 28. If this was to take place now, Senator Kennedy would not be so lucky to get a suspended sentence for his part in the accident. Mary Jo Kopechne and Ted Kennedy were supposedly not romantically linked. However, his brother Robert was reportedly involved with Mary Jo before he was assassinated, which is neither here not there. The truth of the matter is she died in an accident with not many answered questions. I can't imagine what her folks went through. I can't imagine what went through the minds of everyone directly or indirectly involved in the Chappaquiddick event. I'm sure that this whole incident haunted a lot of people for a long, long time.