M.M. & R.F.K.: Dream Affair, or Just Dreamed Up? : The review: The ‘Marilyn & Bobby’ script shamelessly invents a life--and a consort--for the late Robert Kennedy. The overall effect has less sizzle, more fizzle.

Author Joe McGinniss has been taking a lot of heat for inventing an elaborate thought-life for bio subject Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). But, just in time to remind us of the true meaning of fiction, the USA Network has practically invented a life, period, for Bobby Kennedy--and a consort--in “Marilyn & Bobby: Her Final Affair” (premiering at 9 tonight).

It’s a TV movie that takes the docu out of docudrama.

You almost--almost--have to admire the sheer shamelessness of a script so topically revisionist it has J.F.K. remarking of Hoover, “We can fix that old queer.”

It also has a classically campy scene in which a middle-aged man answers the phone in the middle of the night, and says, “It’s for you,” then rolls over and hands it to his equally paunchy bedmate, who, yes, is the top G-man himself, learning the good news about Monroe’s demise.

A lot of this foolishness plays more like a mediocre “Saturday Night Live” skit than history-based tabloid TV, though it couldn’t be more straight-faced. The ho-hum idea is that Monroe had to die for the Kennedys’ sins, as villainous Teamsters Union chief Jimmy Hoffa--under fire from R.F.K. in the famously hot congressional hearings--decides to get at the cocky attorney general any way he can, starting with surveillance and getting worse.

Besides Bobby’s investigation into the mob, there’s also a Cuban crisis to deal with. But all work and no play makes R.F.K. a dull boy, so he regularly jet-sets out to Hollywood and jumps in the convertible of the world’s most beloved actress to tool around L.A., take romps in grassy fields and make kissy-face publicly alongside the pier.

“When I’m with her, she makes me feel like I’m a damn kid again!” Bobby confides to an associate after a weekend at Peter Lawford’s place. The big news here, then, is that Kennedy really did have some kind of affection for Monroe and wasn’t just a cynical horndog. In 1993, this is what passes for respect for our governmental forebears.

The actors all turn in caricatures of varying degrees. James F. Kelly is a pretty terrific Kennedy impressionist; Melody Anderson goes for a slightly less literal take on Monroe, which is wise, since anyone who tries to capture the full measure of her breathiness invariably winds up dehumanizing her.

The various mobsters and feds, meanwhile, are as cartoonish as they need to be. They all converge ludicrously at the climax, in which seemingly dozens of politicians, bad guys, actors and paramedics cross paths as they swarm through Monroe’s death site, as if remaking the ship cabin scene from “A Night at the Opera” for conspirators.