Beyond the Sea

Kevin Spacey plays Bobby Darin, for those of you who don't know, was a singer from the 50-70's who had such hits as 'Splish Splash' and the aforementioned 'Beyond the Sea.'

The movie starts out with Bobby Darin filming a movie, about his life none the less. A reporter comes up to him and asks him "Aren't you too old to be playing this role?" He responds something like "Who better to play the role?" He never actually filmed a movie of his life, and it puzzled me why they would include this the first couple days after I saw it.

After this there is a flash back to when he was a young boy, the doctor was there, and told Bobbies (Not his real name) mother that he would not live past 13. It then goes through him learning music while growing up, and eventually leaving to go into the music business. He changes his name to "Bobby Darin" based on a sign he saw on a Chinese restaurant.

It occurred to me that, the movie he was filming in the beginning was not actually a movie, but a representation of him, playing Bobby Darin. The reporter asking aren't you too old for this role asked that because he was supposed to have died at the age of 13, but he went on to be 37 years of age. This actually seemed really cleaver to me when I first figured it out, which is funny because before I understood it I thought it was just really stupid.

The movie goes through his life, his marriage, the troubles with his marriage, and how he spent very little time with his son, and his eventual death, which many points where he will randomly break out into song and dance, such as when he is romancing his woman. We had planed on seeing something else, but we arrived late and it was the latest showing, and felt very out of place because most of the people seeing the movie were in there 50's or so. At the points where he broke out into song, I often found my self laughing uncontrollably at the sheer akwardness of the abrupt change of style.

Overall it was a decent movie, though I feel bad about paying 8 dollars to see it.