***Oh The Shark, Babe… -Kevin Spacey’s Beyond The Sea-A Film Review

 

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Beyond The Sea, starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, directed by Barry Levinson, 2004

No question I am a child of rock and roll, a child of what is now called the classic age of rock and roll (ouch!), when the likes of Elvis, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Wanda Jackson, Laverne Baker, the Big Bopper, and about a million doo wop groups roamed freely on the earth. And lit up the transistor radio night airwaves for perplexed teenagers along the way. Then came something of a musical counter-revolution as Elvis went slick, Chuck had tax and white women trouble, Jerry Lee had cousin problems, and the others faded and that magical moment went silent. Also faded once parents, our parents, got hooked on the idea that rock and roll meant, ah, sex, (maybe) and thus the devil’s music and started pushing back with singers like Bobby Vee, Fabian, the Everly Brothers, Connie Francis, Brenda Lee, and, well, Bobby Darin. Yes, Bobby Darin, the subject of the film under review, Beyond The Sea.

To be fair as least as far as this biopic portrayed him accurately   apparently Bobby Darin (played very nicely if unevenly by super-actor Kevin Spacey) did not want to be solely seen as a teenage heartthrob but fancied himself a popular entertainer in the mode of the previous generation’s (our classic age of rock and roll parents’ generation) Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. However on the ground, the teenage ground, in those days, especially junior high school days, Bobby with his Splish- Splash –Beyond The Sea-Dream Lover good manners and his popular translation of the Bertolt Brecht Three-Penny Opera song Mack The Knife every mother in the neighborhood pointed him out as prima facie evidence of good taste in teen music. Someone to actually be listened to. Worst of all when he teamed up with and married teenage actress heartthrob Sandra Dee (played by Kate Bosworth) every girl in the neighborhood (and a few traitor boys hooked on perky blondes) could hardly contain themselves with every tidbit of information they could gather from the teen magazines about the pair.    

Enough though about Bobby’s role in the music counter-revolution and the clamp-down of decent rock music. What is really at issue with this film, what is wrong with it to be frank, is its obvious sentimentality, its odd-ball song and dance routines and it flights of fantasy as Bobby Darin meets…well meets his younger Bobby self along the way. Quickly put any film that makes the likes of Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth and John Goodman out of place is a film that should be avoided. Instead just wait a few years for the Beatles and the Stones and the children of classic rock and rock will get well again.