A troubled husband and executive adopts a beaver hand-puppet as his sole means of communicating.
The Beaver might not have been bad if it was acted with some subtlety and realism and something approaching a sense of humour.
The Beaver isn’t for everyone, but I warmed to its ambition. It could easily have been played for easy gags, but everyone involved maintains laudably straight faces.
Odd title, odd star, odd film. Foster’s discipline pays dividends in illuminating a dark, desperate soul, while also draining some of the life from the wacked-out scenario. But no one can deny Gibbo delivers one of the most compelling performances of his career.
The central conceit of The Beaver works much better than it sounds, with some genuinely funny moments and a committed performance from Gibson that really sells the idea.
Don’t expect the puppet to wisecrack — there’s more pain here than in The Passion Of The Christ. It never quite comes together in a satisfying way, but it’s still a brave, strange, brain-stirring piece of filmmaking.
Perhaps the real problem is that Walter is tragic, his puppet is comic, and The Beaver is trite. Yet although it's a didactic film, it's not quite disposable because Gibson is still compelling, in the sense that he's pathologically fascinating to watch.
Gibson...is the film's sole spellbinder.
A welcome antidote to more formulaic Hollywood fare, and deserving of more than embarrassed sniggers.
It’s commendable to capture depression on film, but a talking rodent and a fallen star aren’t the way to do so.
It can be tough going indeed, and trying to separate what’s happening on screen with the behind the scenes turmoil often proves futile.
I'm afraid this bizarre comedy drama about a mental crack-up is not going to stamp out the fires Mel Gibson has lit beneath his career.
Not a good movie but a brave one from a star in trouble.
Foster, with the youngsters close behind, is by far the film’s greatest asset. Cool, measured, never over the top despite almost everything pushing her film in that direction, she holds this flawed but still interesting movie together. A brave one indeed.
The Beaver isn't the train wreck many were predicting it to be, but it's too safe to be the crazy cult film it could have been.
A bold but doomed effort.
Jodie Foster's direction is on the timid side but Gibson's performance manages to make a weird situation feel real and unexpectedly touching.
Directed by Jodie Foster, it is the very essence of a misfire, a film so out of step with the times that I'm tempted to say Dick Cheney on a hunting trip couldn't have misfired more.
Films don't come much train-wreckier than this.
Can a talking puppet save Mel Gibson?
Jodie Foster
Mel Gibson's rant was just another hiccup for scriptwriter Kyle Killen
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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