Synopsis
Noni Jean is a hot new rising star. But not all is what it seems, and the pressure causes Noni to nearly fall apart - until she meets Kaz Nicol, a promising young cop and aspiring politician who's been assigned to her detail. Can Kaz's love give Noni the courage to find her own voice and break free to become the artist she was meant to be?
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Cast
- Gugu Mbatha-RawNoni Jean
- Nate ParkerKazaam Nicol
- Minnie DriverMacy Jean
- Machine Gun KellyKid Culprit
- Danny GloverCaptain Nicol
- Aml AmeenTrey
- Benito MartinezJesse Soria
- Aisha HindsJ Stanley
- India Jean-JacquesNoni (age 10)
- Darryl StephensQuentin
Recommendations
- 83
Hitfix
Mbatha-Raw is shockingly good in creating both the "Noni" public persona and the real Noni. - 83
Entertainment Weekly
Both Mbatha-Raw and Parker are appealing, expressive actors, and writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball) lets them breathe, filling in the boilerplate bones of the story with smartly nuanced commentary. - 83
The A.V. Club
This is feel-good populist entertainment at heart. - 80
Village Voice
A movie isn’t a cliché when it can sing like this. - 80
The Dissolve
Melodrama is defined by exaggerated characters and events, as well as overt appeals to emotion, and Beyond The Lights fits that mold ably and comfortably. But beneath the shiny surface of music-video imagery and true-loveisms lie some provocative ideas and deep truths about how people relate on a private level vs. a public one. - 70
Variety
Beyond the Lights is a strange beast, a music-industry romance that alternates freely between wisdom and mawkishness, caustic entertainment-biz critique and naive wish fulfillment, heartfelt flourishes and soap-opera shenanigans. - 70
The Hollywood Reporter
Gina Prince-Bythewood’s entertaining music-biz melodrama is no less satisfying for the familiarity of its soapy trajectory. - 63
Slant Magazine
By rooting Noni's self-image issues in a controlling mother, the script provides the film with a tame, melodramatic structure that dulls the thorny matters of identity and expression at its center.
