Beyond The Sea (2004)

Beyond The Sea / Kevin Spacey (2004). This stylish production manages to hide, or at least liven up, the usual bio-pic tropes. It is styled as a fantasy. The aging – perhaps already deceased – performer Bobby Darin (Kevin Spacey) looks back on his life and narrates for us. The conceit is that the older Darin (Spacey was about 20 years older than Darin was when he died) has stepped back into his own story accounting for an older actor in the role. Kate Bosworth plays the love of Darin’s life, actress Sandra Dee, and is very good. John Goodman is his manager and Bob Hoskins is his brother-in-law and loyal aide. Spacey, as well as directing and starring, does all his own singing so at times, at certain moments, I caught a whiff of a vanity project, but, on the whole, his performance is sincere. Bobby Darin had rheumatic fever as a child which left him with a weak heart (a doctor predicted he would not see 15 years). But he survived on medication and the occasional backstage oxygen during singing gigs. “Beyond The Sea” received mixed, tending negative, reviews upon first release but there is plenty to enjoy here, including quite a lot of music. Darin and Dee’s son Dodd Mitchell Cassotto (Darin’s birth name) wrote a book about his parents and was a consultant on the movie. Bobbie Darin died during heart surgery at age 37.






Bobby Darin smashes up his 1961 Cadillac Series 62 Convertible with a golf club on Oscar night