Beyond the Sea is one of the worst films i have seen in a long while. The characters are all completely one dimensional, there isn't a shred of credible honest dialog in the entire film, Bobby Darin is not shown to have a single redeeming quality until 45 minutes into the film when the writer decided to throw in a schmaltzy, pointless one minute scene about him defending a black comedian.
Good scripts are built through positive and negative events, that eventually lead to a climax. This film goes virtually an hour with only a couple of negative events. His mother dies and it is sluffed off, and never dealt with. We never see any unconscious desire from Bobby Darin. His character just prances about, egotistically getting whatever he wants during the first half of this film. Good characters have a weak spot, they draw you in and create empathy or at least sympathy. This character had none of that.
There are so many clichés and obvious turns in this film, but what makes them even worse is the fact that they are never dealt with. We find out Sandra Dee has a drinking problem....Thats talked about for all of 5 seconds!! also, at one point, the story seems to be leading to the obvious tension of her being jealous of his career, but again they never bother to explore it, they just shelf the idea and move on to another positive beat regarding bobby darins' career.
To top it all off, in the middle of this boring story we have to put up with 5 different song interludes that stop the plot dead. 15 minutes of just sitting there in the theatre waiting for them to get on with it.
I cant for the life of me see how anyone could defend this film technically.
Good scripts are built through positive and negative events, that eventually lead to a climax. This film goes virtually an hour with only a couple of negative events. His mother dies and it is sluffed off, and never dealt with. We never see any unconscious desire from Bobby Darin. His character just prances about, egotistically getting whatever he wants during the first half of this film. Good characters have a weak spot, they draw you in and create empathy or at least sympathy. This character had none of that.
There are so many clichés and obvious turns in this film, but what makes them even worse is the fact that they are never dealt with. We find out Sandra Dee has a drinking problem....Thats talked about for all of 5 seconds!! also, at one point, the story seems to be leading to the obvious tension of her being jealous of his career, but again they never bother to explore it, they just shelf the idea and move on to another positive beat regarding bobby darins' career.
To top it all off, in the middle of this boring story we have to put up with 5 different song interludes that stop the plot dead. 15 minutes of just sitting there in the theatre waiting for them to get on with it.
I cant for the life of me see how anyone could defend this film technically.