Kevin Spacey did a phenomenal job - the singing was amazing! I did not know about Bobby Darin until I watched this, or that he was married to Sandra Dee, and this was a great story of their love, struggles, and the immense pain of discovering untruths mid-life that have altered his perception of his identity and relationships his entire life. I think this is also a foretelling of the many dual-fame relationships that struggle and often fail when both people are in that Hollywood scene. I give him a lot of credit for not allowing ego to ruin him, but taking the time to explore his soul and understand himself and the legacy he wanted to leave. So many people, some who live a lot longer than he did, never really take that time for self-analysis and reflection. I am happy Kevin Spacey made this movie and paid such a wonderful tribute to a man who lived through immense changes in our country.

This is a fantastic movie with terrific music. Kevin Spacey was simply amazing and has a great voice. He may have been ten years too old to play Darin, but he's so much fun to watch, it doesn't matter. His performance was certainly Oscar worthy. Kate Bosworth is good too and stunningly beautiful. If you like the big band Sinatra sound, you'll love this film. I wish I had seen it when it came out, but I just didn't think I'd be interested in Bobby Darin. I was wrong. He was a talented song writer and fantastic singer who died (of natural causes) much, much too young. Now I've got to go out and buy a CD of Darin's greatest hits (and maybe one of Kevin Spacey's as well.)

When I was entering my teenage years, the Beatles were hitting the U.S. at around the same time. I didn't connect with Bobby Darin's music back then, even though 'Mack the Knife' had a ubiquitous presence on Top 40 radio, even after it's release in 1959. Today, 'Beyond the Sea' stands as one of my all time favorite tunes, and listening to Bobby Darin singing his hit songs again is almost like hearing them for the first time. Director and star Kevin Spacey takes a unique approach in presenting the life of Bobby Darin on the big screen, and to a large extent he's successful. I too had my doubts about Spacey's age in some of the early career sequences, but they were largely dispelled by the creative way Spacey draws attention to that fact early on, using his youthful alter-ego (William Ullrich) to counter point the elder Darin's paranoid tendencies. What the film probably does best is impart Darin's sense of urgency in establishing his legacy, knowing that his rheumatic heart condition meant living on borrowed time. Yes, there's a rushed feel to the romancing of Sandra Dee (Kate Bosworth) and the overview of Darin's rise to the top of his profession, but there's only so much you can do in a film. When it was over, you couldn't have convinced me that it was two and a half hours long. Punctuated by most of Darin's hit songs, the only one I was left wanting for was 'Eighteen Yellow Roses', especially after that tease during the night club scene when the camera panned by a couple of vases drawing almost subliminal attention to it. But a small price to pay over all. I enjoyed the film and now have a firmer appreciation of the price Bobby Darin had to pay for his career success. It's a film I'd recommend and will likely watch over again.

Beyond The Sea, portraying the life and times of singer and actor Bobby Darin, shouldn't work but it does: part biopic, part musical, part fantasy, it is none of these, yet all of them. It might well have ended up a great, amorphous, self-indulgent mess and that it doesn't is, I should imagine, down to the undoubted and, apparently limitless, talents of Kevin Spacey. Not only did he co-write, direct and co-produce Beyond The Sea, he also sings the songs himself and proves to my — admittedly untutored eye — that he is no mean hoofer. It is legitimate to ask: why portray the life of Bobby Darin. He was undoubtedly a good singer with any number of hits to his name and even won an Oscar, but the name will surely mean nothing to most folk under the age of 60. And there is any number of good singers with hits to their names as well as Oscar-winning actors whose lives might equally have merited film treatment. So why Bobby Darin. The answer is quite banal: Spacey has admitted that he has always been fascinated by the singer. Well, if the money is their to pay the production costs and the investors are confident they will turn a profit, why not make this film. But that rather misses the point, and it is relevant to point out that for a man in his mid-forties, Spacey is an unlikely choice to play Darin. But Beyond The Sea is no vanity project. In its mix of genre, it seems to have evolved into a new one, and one I am hard pushed to give a name. The only other film of which it reminds me is Chicago. In both seemingly scenes rooted in the real world pan out into glossy stage numbers. It's a risky way of going about making films, but, and this is crucial, it works and works in spades. Why see it, especially if you have never heard of Bobby Darin? My advice is simple: if you like exceptionally well-made films, with a story, with songs, with dancing, with poignancy and with a lot of vim and chutzpah, you well spend an agreeable two hours with Beyond The Sea. In short, if you like this kind of thing, if you liked Dancin' In The Rain, On The Town and An American In Paris, you will probably love Beyond The Sea. Spacey's performance is noteworthy as is that of Kate Bosworth as Sandra Dee, the woman who fell in love with him and never fell out of love. Special mention should also go to William Ulrich as 'Little Bobby', who shares a great dance number with Spacey as the older Darin. As I said, this shouldn't work, but it does, and that is a certain magic in itself.