Beyond the Lights

Gina Prince-Bythewood has taken — with Beyond the Lights — the backstage drama, drawn the romance in the center of it in realistic, sympathetic tones and created characters who are believable and innately human. All of this is commendable and welcome, but this approach is to a fault, since so much of a movie about fame and fortune (and its inherent dangers) feels drab and uneventful and unfortunately normal. There’s just not all that much that happens in Beyond the Lights, and when things do happen, they’re filmed with ambivalence, something all the more frustrating since the effect dampens an often affecting performance by Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Belle).

The thing is, Beyond the Lights should be interesting, or at least entertaining. If, at the very least, the film had decided to veer into full-on melodrama (instead of simply circling around it, as it does in practice), it could’ve held my attention. But Prince-Bythewood instead approaches the film at a different angle, going for a more dignified emotional response, which — while respectable — feels a bit too stodgy in the end. The film follows Noni (Mbatha-Raw), a rising pop star known less for her singing talent and more for being half naked in rap videos. Obviously unhappy with her career path and her overbearing stage mother (Minnie Driver), she almost jumps off a balcony after an awards show, only to be saved by Kaz (Nate Parker, Non-Stop), a young, honest, humble cop with dreams of becoming a politician.

The two strike up an unlikely romance, one mired in complications thanks to Noni’s fame — something that’s handled maturely. Both characters struggle with the kinds of fears and insecurities that relationships bring along. But just because Beyond the Lights lives within a realistic world doesn’t necessarily translate into something interesting. The film has a tendency to wander off into long fits of solid, though droll, dialogue. When the film has a chance (or at the very least, an excuse) to really show off some sort of cinematic style — such as its musical sequences — Prince-Bythewood lets the camera sit there. Beyond the Lights isn’t so much lazy as simply unimaginative.

What almost saves the film — at least to the point of becoming watchable — is Mbatha-Raw’s performance. It’s emotional, realistic and believable, and far exceeds what Beyond the Lights deserves as a whole. What’s perhaps most striking about it is that, as good as Mbatha-Raw is, she still can’t make the movie itself all that worthwhile. Rated PG-13 for sexual content including suggestive gestures, partial nudity, language and thematic elements.