Chappaquiddick (2017)

CHAPPAQUIDDICK  (2017)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: John Curran
    Jason Clarke, Ed Helms, Jim Gaffigan,
    Kate Mara, Bruce Dern, John Fiore,
    Victor Warren, Taylor Nichols, Clancy Brown
Any chance Ted Kennedy had to become president effectively ended one night in the summer of 1969, when he drove a car off a bridge on Cape Cod, killing his passenger, a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy crawled out of the river in a state of befuddled shock, and the operatives went to work to try to create and sell a cover story that wouldn't just salvage the senator's career, but keep him out of jail. It was a tabloid story from the start, and this is a tabloid dramatization of it. Kennedy comes off looking terrible - his behavior was beyond inexcusable - but that's not exactly news, and Jason Clarke does nothing to make you believe he's anything more than an actor trying to play Kennedy. It's a movie with few highlights, but one of them is Bruce Dern, who steals a couple of minutes as old Joe Kennedy, the dying patriarch. Confined to a wheelchair after a stroke, he's still a force his errant son must try to accommodate, and his contempt for Ted's pathetic response to the tragedy is obvious. Hell, if he was your old man, he'd scare you, too.