TV Review: Collision of False History, Melodrama in Awful ‘The Kennedys’

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CHICAGO – The History Channel made headlines when it announced it was developing a mini-series called “The Kennedys” about the legendary family and even more of them when it dropped the finished product amidst rumors that some actual Kennedys had pressured them to do so. After other networks reportedly passed on the 8-part historical dramatization, it fell to the Reelz Channel. It’s easy to see now why so many networks took a pass even with the built-in buzz factor — this train wreck of revisionist history, inauthentic performances, and some of the worst accents you’ve ever heard is nearly unwatchable.

TV Rating: 1.0/5.0

Where do I start? A J.F.K.(Greg Kinnear) without the charisma to get elected PTA President much less become one of the most beloved leaders of the free world? A characterization of Joe Kennedy (Tom Wilkinson) in which he is painted as an atheistic, power-hungry madman who pushed his children into politics despite their wishes? The assertion that papa Joe actually met with Sam Giancana and Frank Sinatra to help rig the Chicago election for President to guarantee Jack a win in 1960? How about the scene in which Joe directly tells his son on his wedding day that women don’t mind infidelity as long as it’s not thrown in their faces? Or the fact that if you played a drinking game and did a shot every time J.F.K. took a painkiller then you’d get wasted pretty quick? We don’t even need to get into the characterization of Rose Kennedy, a legendary matriarch turned into a plot device by leaden writing.

The Kennedys
Photo credit: © 2010 Kennedys Productions (Ontario) Inc. and Zak Cassar

The historical revisionism, a clear attempt at a hatchet job on a Democratic icon by the notoriously conservative producer Joel Surnow (“24”), wouldn’t be that big a deal if any of it felt genuine. ANY of it. The real-life Kennedys didn’t need to worry about the fact that the mini-series spends more time on painkillers and infidelity than anything J.F.K. actually did in office because it’s impossible to believe that anyone would take this seriously as history. It just doesn’t feel authentic at all, coming off more like a parody of melodramatic mini-series than anything else. Nearly every time someone opens their mouth, one gets that feeling of “that’s probably not how it happened.” The politics aren’t really important. If it was a well-done hatchet job, at least it would have been entertaining.

The Kennedys Photo credit: © 2010 Kennedys Productions (Ontario) Inc. and Zak Cassar

Did they think anyone would take it seriously when Joe says, “You’re a Kennedy and Kennedys never come in second…ever.”? How about when he says “This Mick is going to the White House.”? Or when he tells a character-less Rose that he had as much to do with their son’s election as God — “His hand, my hand.” Every line of dialogue is painted in such broad strokes that none of it rings true.

And the inauthentic feeling of the whole affair is buoyed by some absolutely horrendous accents. Greg Kinnear gets the accent right for the big speeches (as he could probably listen to and then mimic them) but often seems to forget it in the interpersonal scenes while Tom Wilkinson occasionally dips back into his native British and Katie Holmes thinks Boston accents means a complete lack of the letter ‘R,’ which leads to the awkward pronunciation of the word “mawwiage.”

It doesn’t help that “The Kennedys” is a structural mess. Each hour — the show debuts with two episodes the first night, followed by one-a-night for the next four and the final two a week from its debut, for a total of eight hours including commercials — seems to focus on one element of the production (mob involvement, Bay of Pigs, infidelity, etc.) but they’re often told through unnecessary flashbacks. For example, the first episode opens on Election Day in 1960 and then flashes back to detail the impact of the loss of Joe Jr. Why start on Election Day? Why not just tell the story chronologically? Each episode featured at least one moment where someone should have shouted rewrite because the thing is just structurally unsound. It’s a case of how not to use flashbacks.

The Kennedys Photo credit: © 2010 Kennedys Productions (Ontario) Inc. and Zak Cassar

How about the acting? It’s not really his fault, but there’s rarely been a less charismatic leader on television than the one portrayed by Greg Kinnear. I’ve liked Kinnear in the past, but he’s not right here, and not merely because he’s older than J.F.K. was when he died and yet plays him in 1947. He’s always had a young face, but that doesn’t help the lack of authenticity.

Kinnear also seems uninspired by the material (and one can hardly blame him). Katie Holmes plays Jackie like a series of head nods and verbal tics, never getting deep enough into the character, and Tom Wilkinson gets lost by the horrendous characterization of Joe that swings wildly from Shakespearian villain to kind father. He’s a great actor lost in a poorly-written role. Barry Pepper makes it out the most unscathed of the major players, giving a sympathetic portrayal of Bobby.

It’s rare to see so many talented people go so completely wrong as the cast of “The Kennedys.” It’s clear now that it wasn’t historical inaccuracies that kept networks like Showtime, AMC, and HBO away from this headline-grabbing mini-series. It wasn’t that The History Channel got something that might look questionable next to their documentary programming. It was that they got something much worse than just factually wrong. Maybe years from now The History Channel will do a program on the death of the mini-series and “The Kennedys” can finally get some airtime on the network for which it was originally intended.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com