Somewhat Lost at Sea: Day #019 - Beyond The Sea (2004)
Viewed January 19, 2006
Apparently, playing Bobby Darin on screen was a long-standing dream of Kevin Spacey’s. He finally realized this ambition with his turn as actor/director/co-scripter on Beyond The Sea. I must admit that my love of Darin’s music combined with a relative malaise concerning Spacey’s recent work made me more than a little wary of this project. The fact that Spacey was a good eight years older than Darin ever was, yet played him from a young age, didn’t help.
But it wasn’t this strange imagry that hurts Beyond The Sea the most. It’s Spacey’s central conceit of having Darin breaking out of the story structure throughout the film. To make matters worse, Spacey has split darin into two: Bobby Darin (Spacey) and Walden Robert Cassotto (a young actor, William Ullrich) as essentially the public and the private Bobby. It doesn’t help that the kid simply doesn’t have the acting skills to stand next to Spacey, who is actually a lot better here than I expected. I remember thinking to myself when watching Spacey and Ullrich interacting: “Why on Earth was Spacey willing to share screen time with this kid?”
Spacey, as I mentioned, does a fine acting job as Bobby, but he is, ultimately, hurt by his age. In the early scenes, such as the courtship of Sandra Dee (played by Kate Bosworth), it’s downright creepy. But by mid-movie, he’s settled in and Spacey’s greater years are actually an asset by the time we get to Bobby’s “wilderness” period. Spacey also does a fine job in the musical numbers, proving he has a more than decent voice. (Although, let’s face it, he’s no Bobby Darin.)
In support, Kate Bosworth is given far too little to do to even give a decent impression of her abilities. She’s like window-dressing on Bobby’s life. Bobby’s son is even more in the shadows, as he doesn’t get a single strong scene with Spacey. Brenda Blethyn as Polly Cassotto is a bit too much of a caricature, as is Caroline Aaron as her daughter, Nina. John Goodman seems to be sleep-walking through the role of Bobby’s manager. He’s played these kind of things a thousand times and he doesn’t seem very interested in investing too much into it this time.
Bob Hoskins, however, gives another one of his stealth performances. I swear, I had to keep reminding myself that it was Hoskins. It’s not that he did any kind of physical transformation. He looks the same, all right. It’s that he’s so utterly convincing and in such a casual, easygoing way, that you forget he’s acting. Hoskins has been doing this for years, of course, but I’m still regularly amazed at how deft a touch he has as an actor.
Spacey’s direction works best when he’s in “musical-comedy” mode and away from more intimate scenes, where his novice status is more obvious. He invests so much in the emotional scenes that they seem over-acted. A lighter touch would have worked better. But any time he is performing as Bobby (in a real or imagined sequence) the screen pops. Apart from re-casting the young Bobby, I think Spacey did a remarkably solid job for a first-time director.
Maybe my fandom of Bobby Darin makes me look back at Beyond the Sea with rose-colored glasses, because the further away I get from it, the more it grows on me. I’m not sure if repeated viewings would re-enforce my initial reaction or my more positive afterthoughts. But in the end I’m a sucker for a one-man-movie, so I’ll say that Beyond the Sea is worth the effort of watching. If not for its overall quality, then for its status as one person’s take on one of the entertainment industry’s true greats.