Beyond the Sea (film) project." Desson Thomson from "The Washington Post" praised the actor's work, but also felt Spacey did not convincingly portray Darin in his early music career. Internet reviewer James Berardinelli found the storyline to be overtly clichéd, but added, "Despite the choppy narrative and inappropriate casting of Spacey, "Beyond the Sea" managed to keep me entertained." Roger Ebert gave a largely positive review, stating that, "Kevin Spacey believes he was born to play Bobby Darin. I believe he was born to play more interesting characters... In his own best work, Spacey has achieved genius; he is better as an actor than
Beyond the Sea (film) "The Shipping News", was hired to write a new draft for "Beyond the Sea". Epperson's script included Darin's penchant for orgies after his divorce with Sandra Dee. Spacey, finding the Epperson script to be overtly dark and morbid, began to rewrite "Beyond the Sea", incorporating info from the 1987 Lewis Colick script. Spacey acknowledged he portrayed Darin in an exaggeratedly sympathetic way, and decided not to centrally depict the darker side of Darin's life. "The other scripts made Bobby [Darin] a rather unlikable figure," he explained. "I was not interested in making a conventional biopic, as you can see from