Beyond The Sea Review
by Mark R. Leeper (markrleeper AT yahoo DOT com)December 18th, 2004
BEYOND THE SEA
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This is definitely a lesser musical biopic
for this year. Kevin Spacey, who directs and
co-produces as well as stars, looks beneath the
superficial glamour of Bobby Darin to find . . . not
a whole lot that would not have been in the fan
magazines. The storytelling is muddled and even
confusing in places. Worse still there is just no
real passion anywhere in the story of a lounge singer
who looked good in a tuxedo. It is just hard to be
very enthusiastic about any of the characters.
Rating: high 0 (-4 to +4) or 5/10
This has been the year for musical biography films. Following DE- LOVELY and RAY we have BEYOND THE SEA, the story of Bobbie Darin.
In ALL THAT JAZZ the subject of that biography looked at his past with an Angel of Death played by Jessica Lange. In DE-LOVELY much the same mechanism is used with the Angel Gabriel. That is fanciful, but it at least makes sense. In this film Spacey also plays Darin who--though he is much too old to do so--is playing himself in an autobiographical film that that the real Darin never actually made. (Got that?) While he is doing this he is reviewing his life with the boy who plays the young Darin and who actually seems to be the real Darin as a boy. Somehow this is all supposed to explain why Spacey is playing Darin, though Spacey is too old for the role. He is a 45-year-old playing a man who died at 37. At least Spacey does his own singing and his own dancing and does a very good job of each.
Darin is a sickly boy named Walden Robert Cassotto, told he would be lucky to reach his fifteenth birthday due to rheumatic fever.
His escape from the confines of his life is music, which he learns from his mother (Brenda Blethyn) to love. As he gets older he starts with performing one-night gigs at weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. Success starts to come when he changes his performing name to Bobby Darin taking Bobby from his middle name and Darin from, well, that is one of the better stories. He moves on to nightclubs and television, his popularity increasing. When he makes his first film he meets Sandra Dee (Kate Bosworth) who does not initially like him at all. And her mother (Greta Scacchi) likes him even less. To Darin this is just another problem he decides to overcome. Later there is a little scandal in the story, but even that has a fan magazine sort of feel. Just about everything that happens to Darin is as mild as Darin himself was.
The script for BEYOND THE SEA written by Paul Attanasio, Lorenzo Carcaterra, Jeffrey Meek, and James Toback--four credited writers is a bad sign--seems content with telling superficial stories about Darin. It leaves big gaps, and does not dig into his character. He never seems to be more ambitious than to be a successful lounge singer. His big dream is to perform at the Copacabana nightclub. There isn't much to the character as Spacey plays it. There is very little drama to his story. He seems an empty man making superficial music. Instead of shining a light into the soul of Darin (if there was such a thing) dramatically Spacey is content to merely do an impression. Spacey reportedly wanted to make this film because his mother was a big fan of Bobby Darin and in spite of the age difference Spacey can sing like Darin and even occasionally look a little like Darin. Spacey apparently could manage to get Bob Hoskins and John Goodman for his film but could not provide either with much to do other than to look respectively like Hoskins and Goodman.
This is Spacey's second film as director. He is a good actor, but this film needed a more critical hand. I rate BEYOND THE SEA a high 0 on the -4 to +4 scale or 5/10.
Mark R. Leeper
[email protected]
Copyright 2004 Mark R. Leeper
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
