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• Beyond the Sea

2 Stars

Kevin Spacey's Beyond the Sea is an impassioned, entertaining musical biography of the life of Walden Robert Cassotto, better known as pop singer Bobby Darin-who died in 1973 after years of heart problems. In only his second directorial attempt, Spacey's uneven celebrity biotale is frequently too unevenly told, relying on a variety of narrative cliches from similar films from decades older.

Spacey presents Darin's life like the classic rags-to-riches tales of the Great Depression. Born to a single mother in the Bronx in the mid-1930s, suffering from rheumatic fever as a child and told he'd not likely live to age 15 due to its damage to his heart, Darin developed his love for singing from a musical mom.

Quickly becoming a local sensation at nightclubs, Darin lives in the shadows of another working class Italian-American crooner, Frank Sinatra. In a somewhat unbelievable moment, Darin becomes inspired to change his ethnic last name from Cassotto to Darin when he notices a burnt-out Chinese restaurant neon sign that no longer reads Mandarin. Choosing a slightly more rock 'n' roll style and capitalizing on early television appearances, Darin appeals to a youth audience with the silly tune "Splish Splash" and soon pop classics like "Mack the Knife" and the film's title tune.

Instead of following the trend of more recent innovative musicals, like Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! or Rob Marshall's Chicago, Spacey, as the film's producer, director, co-screenwriter and singing star (there's no lip-synching here), chooses the standard method of presenting Darin's short life chronologically, and punctuating key parts with his hit songs, trying to find thematic significance between the songs' lyrics and his life.

Spacey spices up this otherwise routine celebrity biography with Darin's stand against racist night club managers, threatening the powerful owner of the Copacabana with a sit-in protest if he refused African-American comedian George Kirby's right to open for his gig, then Darin openly supports the anti-war movement and the presidential candidacy of Senator Bobby Kennedy in 1968-but all that comes from these feeble attempts at making Darin seem profound is a few cliched peace songs.

Throughout the film, Spacey experiments with a rather awkward, film-within-a-film dialogue structure. Spacey begins the film with a fictional attempt at a Darin film biography that has Darin's participation; then throughout the film Darin continues talking to a world-wise 10-year-old actor who plays his younger self, "Little Bobby," as he relates elements of his life's personal failings-especially troubled marriage, his lingering illness and seemingly fated early demise.

Spacey is properly energetic as the singer-performer Darin, but is much less believable as one of the oldest looking guys in his mid-30s. Kate Bosworth is radiant, but she's mostly asked to look pretty and bored as Darin's teen idol movie star wife Sandra Dee.

Decades after Darin's stardom and demise you ultimately wonder who Beyond the Sea is meant to appeal to-he wasn't a musical pioneer or social critic, he wasn't even a great singing talent or movie star. It seems more like a personal project Spacey felt compelled to produce, almost single-handedly, to express his own parallel connections as an entertainer.