Tag Archives: ray

It’s time again for “10 Year Old Movie Reviews,” a column delivering the truth about crap I saw for the first or second time on teevee the other day, and you comfortably thought you forgot about. It wastes your time and mine, which is the only reason you’re reading this at work anyway. Mission accomplished. Go Team. Beyond The Sea (2004) is the remarkably well-funded story of a remarkably uninteresting man. From the outset, the viewer becomes aware that this was a pet project of the redoubtable, talented Kevin Spacey, who plays Bobby Darin with an enthusiastic, artistic, choreographed giddiness deserving of a subject with a more engaging life story. Like Regis Philbin, or a cartoon character that wears the same outfit every day. That would have been easier to watch. An encomiastic fanboy love letter, I would have put money on “Beyond the Sea” being produced by Spacey (it was). As a refresher for you youngins, Bobby Darin was this guy: Somebody throw a bag of cats down the stairs and drown this shit out! I know, I know, I was hoping for “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” too. More important than his ridiculous attachment to tonedeaf Italian lounge noise is the fact (that I learned from the movie) that Bobby Darin wrote the smash hit, nonsense, seminal rock track “Splish Splash” in the space of 20 minutes. Immediately upon the single’s release, women were throwing sopping panties at him wherever he went, and everybody that danced like an idiot (like they did back then) was idioting themselves to death over it. The world was Bobby Darin’s discount brothel, and all he had to do was rub out two or three more easy tunes, and do a couple shitty Elvis style movies. A genius like that could do it in … Finish reading this sumbitch!