Beyond the Sea - 0 stars
Now Playing: (2004, Kevin Spacey) [seen in theatre]
The good news is that Kevin Spacey can sing like Bobby Darin. The bad news is that, since Spacey is touring the country singing Darin songs, there's no compelling reason to see his novelty act/vanity project of a biopic. Bobby Darin may very well have led an interesting life worthy of being brought to the silver screen, but nothing in this film really makes it seem that way, with the story glossing over damn near everything that could have given it any complexity. We see him as a child, his mom buys a piano, and before you can sing "We Need a Montage" he's off to the big city to make a name for himself. This seriously happens again and again, as though a song will take us all past the critical moments in life. This might be more forgivable if Darin's songs sounded like they were flavored by his personal demons, but (unlike, say, Johnny Cash or Ray Charles) Darin's music was in the Sinatra vein, all about cool, swagger and showmanship, which make them easy to listen to but terribly ineffective as narrative mortar. The structure of the film is really annoying as well- Spacey takes a cue from Fosse's wonderful ALL THAT JAZZ by framing Darin's story as a film made about him in his final days, looking back at his life (thereby attempting to justify Spacey in the role even when Darin's two decades younger), but the device is at best distracting and at worst a dramatic hindrance. Particularly awful are scenes with Spacey-as-Darin facing off with the child actor playing Darin's young self, as the kid tries to confine the man to the truth, while the man embellishes in order to create a good story- in the end, both fail rather embarrassingly. Lousy as drama, lousy as a musical, lousy as biography. Nothing to endorse, really.