Review of The Beaver (2011) by James K — 06 Apr 2012

"The Beaver" was a risky undertaking by Jodie Foster, and an even riskier concept for the screenwriter, but it mostly succeeds. Mostly. The acting is exceptional overall -- Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster are extremely talented actors and Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence are young actors destined for a great careers. The flaw I found with the film was how believable the story was. I'm aware that depression takes many forms, and I actually had no problem believing that Gibson's character would start speaking through a puppet, but I thought the way most people reacted to the beaver puppet was unrealistic. At one point in the film, after saving his dying toy business, Gibson's character interviews on The Today Show and The Daily Show, vastly increasing the scale of the film and exposing more people to his condition. The puppet concept is one that can work, but the realism is severely diminished by more people becoming aware of it. There is just simply NO way that so many people would immediately accept the beaver (and no way he'd have gotten an interview in front of millions of people). I believe the concept would have worked better on a smaller scale in a centralized family drama. "The Beaver" tries to be a family drama at its core, but it often attempts to reach beyond that, in which it fails.

I was very entertained by the film and impressed with its risk-taking, but the story-lines (including a side-story involving the eldest son in the family) failed to be as realistic as they tried to be. This is a premise that could have worked even better if the film was approached differently. I enjoyed "The Beaver," and it's definitely worth a viewing if you aren't immediately turned off by the strange concept.