Review of The Voices (1953) by Leon B — 18 Jul 2015

Review:

What a crazy movie! The storyline is completely mad but funny, in a weird type of way and it's really unpredictable. Its about a psychopathic man called Jerry who works in a bathtub factory and takes a fancy to one of his work colleagues. After a whole, he plucks up the courage to ask the girl out but she's not really keen on him. When she finally agrees to go out with him on a date, he goes home and he talks to his cat and dog about how he should impress her. The cat is a vicious, mean animal who gets Jerry to do bad things but the dog has a kind heart and he tries to guide him down the correct path. His psychiatrist prescribes him pills so he doesn't hear the voices but the drugs make him quite depressed so he doesn't take them. When he goes to meet his date at a restaurant, he ends up sitting there all night waiting for her to turn up but she decides to go to a Karaoke bar with her friends instead. On the way home he bumps into her in the street and she asks for some help because her car has broken down. He then gives her a lift home and they end up in a car accident because a deer steps in the middle of the road. After taking the deer's life, because the deer told him to, the girl makes a run for her life and Jerry mistakingly takes her life after slipping in the woods. From there the movie goes completely crazy because he goes on a killing spree, with the help of his talking pets. His victims heads end up in his fridge and they also talk to him so he's getting different advice from everyone, which sends him mad. Its hard to say if I enjoyed this movie because the storyline is totally out there. Ryan Reynolds plays the psychopathic role quite well, along with the geeky innocent side to the character. It does go a bit too far after a while because his victims were getting murdered for silly reasons and the dance scene at the end really didn't make any sense. Maybe he found his happy place! Anyway, it's worth a watch just for its warped humour and his psychotic behaviour but you do have do be in the right frame of mind to enjoy it. Watchable but strange!

Round-Up:

Ryan Reynolds has made way too many flops recently and this one really didn't help. Green Lantern was a terrible film and it really got slatted by the critics and R.I.P.D lost a lot of money at the box office because it was pretty awful. Safe House made a healthy profit, mainly because of Denzel Washington but Unlikely Hero and Chaos Theory were hardly heard of. He has made some small appearances in Ted and A Million Ways To Die In The West but he has failed in most of his major roles. At 38 years old and with a few major movies in the pipeline, like Self/less, Woman In Gold and Captive, I hope that his career makes a turn for the best. This movie was directed by Marjane Satprati from Iran who has only directed another three small films in her career called Persepolis, Chicken With Plums and the Gangs of the Jotas, which I have never heard of before. She managed to show a different side to Ryan Reynolds but the storyline was really strange and really not for everyone's taste. She did have a good cast with Ryan as the lead and Anna Kendrick and Gemma Arterton as his victims but I still found it hard to watch after a while.

Budget: N/A.

Worldwide Gross: $400,000 (Terrible!).

I recommend this movie to people who are into their comedy/horrors about a troubled man who gets persuaded by his cat and dog to commit murders. 4/10.