Beyond the Sea

The Hollywood Reporter 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.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Put simply, the film is a dazzling and fearless piece of showmanship.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

As long as Spacey is singing, the movie soars.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It is also probably relevant that Spacey, in preparing the project, knew something we could not guess: He is a superb pop singer.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

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.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Doing his own singing (an uncanny imitation), Spacey is a marvel.

Variety Todd McCarthy

It's raffish, flashy, energetic, entertaining and not very deep.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Artfully structured, combining old-school MGM-type musical numbers with occasional postmodern flourishes to keep the narrative moving.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The real stars are the orchestrators and musicians who swaddled Spacey in a gorgeous blanket of sound.

USA Today Mike Clark

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It fails to persuade us that its subject is significant enough to be worth a movie.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

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.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Had Spacey made Beyond the Sea 10 or 15 years ago, it might have been close to transporting.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

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.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Vanity: the surest road to mediocrity.

TV Guide Ethan Alter

In the end, Spacey's devotion to Darin may have blinded him to the bigger picture.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Weirdly moving.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Hindered by its own theatricality, Beyond the Sea feels at once hermetic, defensive and corny.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Spacey is almost as swinging as Darin was, but his filmmaking leans toward tried-and-true formulas.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Beyond the Sea, with all its gaping faults, is the genuine article. It succeeds in being deeply and sincerely insincere.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Anyone who thinks Beyond The Sea is a movie about Bobby Darin isn't paying close enough attention.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Saved by energetic musical numbers.

Slate David Edelstein

Apart from Caroline Aaron's turn as Darin's overbearing sister...Beyond the Sea has nothing to recommend it.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

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.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

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.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

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.

Premiere Peter Debruge

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.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

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

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Much more "Splish" than "Splash."

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The best reason to see it is Kate Bosworth as Sandra Dee.

Miami Herald Howard Cohen

Camp classic? You bet.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's simply an awful, awful film.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Jaw-droppingly awful.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

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.

Film Threat Phil Hall

Such a hopeless mess that there's no fun in tossing insults at its endless shortcomings.