It's borderline impressive that someone made a politically tinged piece of media like Chappaquiddick in the year of 2018 and have it say so little, even inadvertently. I'm not saying this because this new John Curran directed movie doesn't reinforce my already held political beliefs, rather, because it struck me as strange how this movie could spend so much time on a real-life event like the Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddick disaster and not come away with something to say, even just in an esoteric sense instead of commentating on specific modern issues. Chappaquiddick as a film isn't bad, at it's worst moments it's just "meh", but it's lack of substantive themes do speak to the more paint-by-numbers nature of the production that ends up leaving it feeling more underwhelming than engaging.
