This came out in 2004 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
There’s a fine line between showing the love and showing off. And the latter, I am sorry to say, seems to be what Kevin Spacey is up to on the soundtrack to his new Bobby Darin biopic Beyond The Sea.
Unlike the recent Ray, which had Jamie Foxx lip-synching to Ray Charles classics, Beyond the Sea finds Spacey crooning new versions of Darin gems like Hello Young Lovers, Mack the Knife, Splish Splash and the title cut. Granted, the ridiculously talented if apparently overconfident Spacey not only has the vocal chops to pull it off, but also the emotional range to channel both Darin’s poppy joie de vive and the dark personal undercurrents it masked. Still, if the point of Beyond the Sea is really to showcase Darin as opposed to director-writer-star-vocalist Spacey, perhaps he should have looked beyond the me.
