Apart from Caroline Aaron's turn as Darin's overbearing sister...Beyond the Sea has nothing to recommend it.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
By the end of this wholly disorienting experience (this must be what it's like to be held captive in a Long Island supper club and force-fed hallucinogens), there's only one thing we damn well know, and it's that Kevin Spacey sure as hell believes he was born to play Bobby Darin.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Saved by energetic musical numbers.
The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt
Kevin Spacey, both as star and director, has created a hugely entertaining, highly empathetic portrait of a man for whom music was literally the thing that kept him alive.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Weirdly moving.
Anyone who thinks Beyond The Sea is a movie about Bobby Darin isn't paying close enough attention.
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
Doing his own singing (an uncanny imitation), Spacey is a marvel.
Such a hopeless mess that there's no fun in tossing insults at its endless shortcomings.
Put simply, the film is a dazzling and fearless piece of showmanship.
It's raffish, flashy, energetic, entertaining and not very deep.