![]() ![]() Mbatha-Raw plays Noni, who throughout her childhood has been pushed into stardom by her ruthlessly driven single mother, Macy (Minnie Driver). The fact that “Beyond the Lights” proudly occupies a middlebrow genre means that Mbatha-Raw will most likely be overlooked for the season’s biggest awards, the casualty of snooty high-low distinctions that, with luck, will mean nothing to audiences who like their pulp escapism served with smarts and good taste. Like the early Oscar hopeful Eddie Redmayne in the far more high-minded “ The Theory of Everything,” also opening locally this week, Mbatha-Raw undergoes an astonishing physical transformation in service to the role of a young British prodigy. ![]() The fact that the film’s star, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, delivers a genuinely galvanizing performance as a singer searching for her own voice makes “Beyond the Lights” not just enormous fun to watch but surprisingly gratifying on an artistic level. But it also fully owns its wish-fulfillment fantasies of love, fame and ambition, set within an overarching bid for authenticity that gives what might have been a disposable piece of eye candy an admirable sense of groundedness. Structured as a conventional stage-mother melodrama, this go-for-broke backstage romance, written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (“ Love & Basketball”), admittedly suffers from inertness during its most starchily emotionalistic passages. A shamelessly entertaining mash-up of “ Gypsy” and “ The Bodyguard” finely tuned to the blingy excess of the hip-pop era, “ Beyond the Lights” is a movie brimming with promise and unexpected pleasures.
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