Vanity film from Kevin Spacey, directing himself in the part of pop star Bobby Darin in a free-form, fantasy-riddled biopic, throwing in a gratuitious impression of Jerry Lewis in the bargain (not bad), and doing his own singing in a mellower, droopier, croonier style possibly more suited to a biography of Vic Damone or Al Martino. The objection, voiced on the set of an autobiographical film-within-the-film, "He's too old to play this part," will not be answered by the rhetorical question, "How can you be too old to play yourself?" You can be too old to play "yourself" if you are really Kevin Spacey and not Bobby Darin, and you are already eight years older than Darin at the end of his life, never mind when he was recording "Mack the Knife" or courting Sandra Dee. (Kate Bosworth, who roughly recalled that actress in Blue Crush and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, fails to measure up when trying to cram her hoof into the actual glass slipper.) Spacey does manage to win some sympathy -- no small feat -- for the teen idol's makeover into the mustached, sideburned, wigless, and politically involved Bob Darin of the late Sixties (a sudden cousin to Bob Dylan), perhaps partly because his physical resemblance is closer at that point. But at all points we are conscious of contemplating not the life and legacy of Bobby Darin but the chutzpah of Kevin Spacey. Not without interest of its own. John Goodman, Bob Hoskins, Brenda Blethyn, Caroline Aaron. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd