Review of The Beaver (2011) by Hatem A — 05 Dec 2013

3.0/4.0.

Original, offbeat movie about Walter Black (Mel Gibson), a family man and CEO of a near-bankruptcy toy company who is suffering from severe depression. As he is about to take his life, he is "saved" by a beaver sock puppet. Gibson is great here giving one of the best performances of his career capturing the nuances of this troubled character. As the beaver, Gibson sports a perfect cockney accent.

With the puppet, Gibson's character tries to get "sort of" his life together; he fixes his broken relationship with his architect wife Meredith (Jodie Foster who also directs), gets the unparalleled attention and devotion of his young son Henry (Riley Thomas) and tries to save his dying company. His older son, high-schooler Porter (Anton Yelchin), fails to connect with him. The movie tries to emphasize that Walter and Porter are very similar yet Porter just doesn't want to be the failure his father was (he writes on post-it-notes their similar traits to try to avoid them). Porter, makes an extra buck from writing papers for his fellow students, is seemingly borderline depressed. His salvation comes in the form of Norah (Jennifer Lawrence), a seemingly perfect yet troubled student who asks for his help in writing a graduation speech.

The movie never fails to be interesting (running at 90 minutes also helps) and the acting is very good throughout: nothing wrong can be said about Foster, Yelchin and Lawrence but Gibson steals the show. The script (by TV show writer Kyle Killen) is the main problem as we don't really get insights into why Walter is in the state he is in and why the change of heart in the film's final act (that is a bit grotesque). What could have helped is greater depth in Foster's character and insights into the marriage. Also, the Yelchin-Lawrence storyline could have been done without but doesn't necessarily feel that way because of the actors' strength. "The Beaver" is undoubtedly good but could have been much better. Kudos to the catchy music score by Marcelo Zarvos.