In addition to the flick, by doing a 12-city tour as Bobby Darin, Spacey solidifies this talent and makes it real—he has to be a really awesome song-and-dance man to pull this off live in front of big audiences, which is something that today's musical-movie stars can't do (just think of Richard Gere and Renée Zellweger trying to do their Chicago stuff live—they wouldn't hack it, because the only reason they were able to make Zellweger look like a great singer-dancer in the film was through rapid cutting and massive re-recording).
So, it's totally an ego thing—which becomes even more evident with every Beyond the Sea article I read, because Spacey seems to have his entire cast and crew trained to repeat the party line of “Kevin Spacey is the greatest actor-filmmaker of all time. He was directing the film, producing the film, writing the film, editing the film, shooting the film, dancing better than Gene Kelly, singing better than Sinatra, and acting better than De Niro ALL AT THE SAME FRIGGIN' TIME. Please worship this man.” And then the reporter will interview Spacey, who'll say something like, "I'm a very humble man, so I would never imply that I'm an genius and egomaniac, but have I mentioned that I'm better than the real Bobby Darin? I'm a god. Watch my incredible performance as the feisty science-soldier in 'Outbreak' for proof. Lick the ground I walk on. Now.”
Of course, with all the former models and semi-talented pretty faces making beaucoup bucks as "actors", the multi-talented Spacey has every right to flaunt what he's got. The fact that he's 20 years too old to play Bobby Darin, coupled with his weakness for melodrama, being the only real negative against him.
I’ve been flying around the country a lot lately, which has lead to my watching some films I might not have normally seen: I was not impressed by Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, although it had a couple of okay jokes (I liked the pirate and the pizza-down-the-pants, but after this mostly mediocre effort, the atrocious Duplex, and the other laughless clunkers Ben Stiller has churned out lately, he's now highly ranked on my shit list). I'm embarrassed to admit that I laughed all the way through The Hot Chick, although I prefer 1999’s Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo when it comes to Rob Schneider films (a dirty, secret, guilty pleasure). I, Robot was disappointing considering director Alex Proyas’ previous sci-fi effort, Dark City, a perfect film; the FX in the lower-budget Dark City somehow looked better than the videogame-like FX found the expensive I, Robot, with its cheesy-action-movie machine-gun ending... bler....
Article comments