| 80 |
The Hollywood Reporter
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.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
Put simply, the film is a dazzling and fearless piece of showmanship.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
As long as Spacey is singing, the movie soars.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
It is also probably relevant that Spacey, in preparing the project, knew something we could not guess: He is a superb pop singer.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
The imagination, energy, chutzpah and sheer affection shown for Darin by director-writer-star Spacey, who plays the singer, are admirable, kicky. This is a movie, that, like Darin himself, takes a lot of chances and delivers on many of them.
|
| 75 |
Rolling Stone
Doing his own singing (an uncanny imitation), Spacey is a marvel.
|
| 70 |
Variety
It's raffish, flashy, energetic, entertaining and not very deep.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
Artfully structured, combining old-school MGM-type musical numbers with occasional postmodern flourishes to keep the narrative moving.
|
| 63 |
Charlotte Observer
The real stars are the orchestrators and musicians who swaddled Spacey in a gorgeous blanket of sound.
|
| 63 |
USA Today
Spacey's brazen casting isn't as beyond the pale as it ought to be. In fact, it's hard to imagine this strange and only occasionally successful movie without him.
|
| 58 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It fails to persuade us that its subject is significant enough to be worth a movie.
|
| 50 |
Dallas Observer
By offering up the feel-good, MGM-styled musical version, a movie you can hum along to, his biopic serves only as a giant question mark; why bother if you're going to excise the interesting and naughty bits.
|
| 50 |
Boston Globe
Had Spacey made Beyond the Sea 10 or 15 years ago, it might have been close to transporting.
|
| 50 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
The film never gives you a real sense of what drove Darin on, fighting a heart ailment (from childhood rheumatic fever) and fighting an industry and press that wanted to pigeonhole him.
|
| 50 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Vanity: the surest road to mediocrity.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
Ethan Alter
In the end, Spacey's devotion to Darin may have blinded him to the bigger picture.
|
| 50 |
Entertainment Weekly
Weirdly moving.
|
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Hindered by its own theatricality, Beyond the Sea feels at once hermetic, defensive and corny.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
Spacey is almost as swinging as Darin was, but his filmmaking leans toward tried-and-true formulas.
|
| 50 |
The New York Times
Beyond the Sea, with all its gaping faults, is the genuine article. It succeeds in being deeply and sincerely insincere.
|
| 50 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Anyone who thinks Beyond The Sea is a movie about Bobby Darin isn't paying close enough attention.
|
| 50 |
ReelViews
Saved by energetic musical numbers.
|
| 40 |
Slate
Apart from Caroline Aaron's turn as Darin's overbearing sister...Beyond the Sea has nothing to recommend it.
|
| 40 |
Salon.com
You can't BECOME a character if you want to BE that character: Desperation isn't the same thing as acting. Spacey's mimicry is so precise, it's exhausting.
|
| 38 |
New York Daily News
Clumsily merges fiction and reality, biography and musical fantasy, and breaks the fourth wall in a way that allows Spacey to lamely address his own miscasting.
|
| 38 |
New York Post
The willfully eccentric Beyond the Sea seems to be telling us a lot more about its star and director, Kevin Spacey, than its ostensible subject.
|
| 38 |
Premiere
Kevin Spacey is a darn good actor, and he's a pretty good singer to boot. But those traits alone do not excuse the painful experience to be had sitting through Beyond the Sea.
|
| 30 |
Washington Post
This vainglorious biopic about Bobby Darin is really about what the '60s pop singer and actor means to Kevin Spacey.
|
| 30 |
Austin Chronicle
Much more "Splish" than "Splash."
|
| 25 |
Baltimore Sun
The best reason to see it is Kate Bosworth as Sandra Dee.
|
| 25 |
Miami Herald
Camp classic? You bet.
|
| 25 |
Portland Oregonian
It's simply an awful, awful film.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Jaw-droppingly awful.
|
| 20 |
Village Voice
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.
|
| 10 |
Film Threat
Such a hopeless mess that there's no fun in tossing insults at its endless shortcomings.
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