Beyond the Sea: Critic Reviews

The film's tortured conceit -- that a peculiarly older-than-reality Darin is making his own autobiopic, comparing memories with a kid who plays the hero as a sickly shrimp -- is its own kind of can't-look-away crazy.

Kevin Spacey's biography of Bobby Darin is a mess, but it captures Darin's desperation, his braggadocio and his magnetism.

In scenes that re-create up-tempo engagements at the Copacabana and other nightspots, this heartfelt portrait comes to life.

This vainglorious biopic about Bobby Darin is really about what the '60s pop singer and actor means to Kevin Spacey.

If Spacey's age problem proves an insurmountable distraction for literalists and Darin fans, his admirers will no doubt relish the chance to watch him sing, dance and basically take over the screen for two hours.

Your standard biopic boilerplate, with a lot of self-reflexive hokum.

Drowning in accidental subtext, it's both queasy psychodrama and earnest ego trip, a stunt so bravely defiant of commonsense realism that it borders on the avant-garde.

The awkwardness of the film's structure and its inept theatrics diminish the real drama in Darin's life.

Offers little psychological insight into the man beyond his mantra -- 'I want it all. ... I want to surpass Sinatra in everything he does.'

Ostensibly a love letter to Mr. Darin, it's more a love letter from Mr. Spacey to Mr. Spacey.

The one thing Spacey couldn't do for Beyond the Sea was grow younger. And that's the 'gotta-shut-your-eyes' flaw that keeps Spacey's Bobby Darin biopic from being a great movie, instead of just a good one.

The movie possesses genuine feeling because Spacey is there with Darin during all the steps of this journey, up and down, all the way into death.

Beyond the Sea doesn't quite have [that swing]. But it's close.

The film never gives you a real sense of what drove Darin on.

[Spacey is] someone who is capable of producing, writing, directing, starring and doing his own singing -- and making it all work magnificently.

For the most part this movie is a kick to watch, and what a crazy-cool thing for a guy with two Oscars to attempt, a salute from one wandering artist to another.

Like a lounge revue on a second-class cruise ship.

Seems to be telling us a lot more about its star and director, Kevin Spacey, than its ostensible subject, Bobby Darin.

Spacey may worship at the altar of Darin, but the real Bobby was beyond him.

Spacey the actor bails out Spacey the director. He's been talking about his abiding love of Darin for quite some time, and he nails Darin in look, deed and buttery croon, making up for many of the film's structural deficiencies.

What on earth could Spacey be thinking?

A Whitman's Sampler of biopic cliches.

Great music and a few good scenes do not a movie make.

A hugely entertaining, highly empathetic portrait.