The Year That Trembled opens with a dizzying barrage of visual clichés about the turbulent '60s. There's the iconoclastic soldier flashing the peace sign, mean old Richard Nixon engaging in some ghoulish doublespeak, airborne bombs wreaking havoc on impoverished villages, and, of course, long-haired protesters being hassled by The Man. The Year That Trembled technically takes place in 1970 and '71, but it's very much about the '60s–or at least the '60s of the popular imagination, a well-documented period when dope-smoking hippies and repressive squares battled for the nation's soul. The film takes place in the immediate vicinity of Kent State, and deals intermittently with both the case against the student demonstrators who led the ill-fated protests and the case against the men who killed four students. Former dreamy teen heartthrob Jonathan Brandis (who has grown up to become a less-dreamy dead ringer for Giovanni Ribisi) leads a large cast as that oldest of coming-of-age cliches, the sensitive aspiring writer who scribbles his deep thoughts into a journal. Over the course of the film, Trembled's characters–who include The Courageous Teacher Who Makes A Difference In The Lives Of Her Students and Fernwood 2Nite tag team Martin Mull and Fred Willard in rare dramatic roles–do some living, loving, and learning. But mostly, they grapple with Important Issues and deliver big speeches. Brandis, who conveys his character's anxiety about getting drafted by maintaining the same deer-in-headlights expression throughout the film's duration, makes for a terminally bland hero, and his character's plodding earnestness sets the tone for the well-meaning but inert drama that surrounds him. The Year That Trembled tries to bring the war close to home, stopping just short of having the Viet Cong invade Ohio, but its footage of real-life protesters and coffins draped in American flags instead accentuates just how pointless and derivative writer-director Jay Craven's film feels. Movies have the ability to make history come alive, but this dull period soap opera feels more like history that's already been embalmed.