Movie Review: The Beaver

'Beaver' simplifies a complicated tale (Our Grade: C+)

By Dale Roe
Austin360.com | Austin American-Statesman

Screenwriter Kyle Killen says that "The Beaver" started as a short story but became something more akin to a novel. When he found himself several hundred pages in with the story barely started, he decided to give it a go in screenplay form as a disciplinary exercise.

The resulting effort landed on the Blacklist, an industry ranking of the best unproduced screenplays, in 2008.

It's hard to say how much Killen's screenplay was changed, but I'd like to see the novel version. Because director (and co-star) Jodie Foster's film version seems incomplete.

"The Beaver" is not a bad movie. In fact, at its best, it can be fascinating, especially when viewed (as it inevitably will be) through the lens of star Mel Gibson's post-filming public meltdown, the repercussions of which delayed the film's release.

The actor plays Walter Black, a husband, father and toy company executive in the immobilizing grip of deep depression. In an alcoholic haze, Black checks into a hotel and attempts suicide. He wakes to the sobering chatter of the Beaver, a hand puppet he fished out of a liquor store Dumpster. Speaking in a cockney accent, the Beaver tells Black that he is there to save his life.

At first, use of the puppet makes things better for Black. Speaking only through the plush critter, Black reconnects with his wife and youngest son (his teenage boy, played by Anton Yelchin, remains angry and distant). He tells his employees that the Beaver will be making all of his company's business decisions and — with its help — Black is inspired to create a blockbuster new product.

Soon, though, the façade of a happy life begins to crumble. Black won't let the Beaver let him go, and his wife realizes that he is lying about the puppet communication being a radical form of therapy. At that point, things go rapidly downhill.

Speed is a problem in "The Beaver." The dramatic shifts and turns of event that could be lingered upon in the pages of a novel — the motivations that could be studied and convincingly explained — just happen too quickly. Black's post-puppet rise to happiness is too fast to accept, and his inevitable descent into possible madness and its violent aftermath happens at an equally breakneck pace. His wife accepts the Beaver too quickly and carelessly, then turns on it just as fast. The whole thing seems a bit too \u2026 constructed.

And yet, even as it seems as if Black's story is being presented in Reader's Digest version, it completely crowds out a subplot involving his teenage son, a potentially fascinating character who is so terrified that he is turning into his father that he has papered over his bedroom walls with lists of qualities they share so that he can eradicate them one by one. The boy has a gift for getting inside other people's heads and exploits it to write and sell essays to his fellow students. He also pursues a pretty cheerleader with a dark secret, but that relationship — and the secret — is never satisfactorily explored.

That's another problem with "The Beaver" — Foster knows when to play her film for laughs (the suicide attempt is intentionally hilarious) and when to play it straight, but there's just too much going on here for the director to deftly navigate. As a result, nothing seems completely developed. This is not to say that "The Beaver" is not an interesting or worthwhile film. It's both, if perhaps a bit too ambitious.

The best element, somewhat surprisingly, is Gibson. Funny and tragic — and regardless of what you think of him personally — the actor must get credit for his fully committed and realized performance. In less-skilled hands, we could have wound up with the sort of over-the-top effort that Anthony Hopkins filed as a similarly confused ventriloquist in 1978's "Magic." Instead, we're able to buy the ridiculous premise because of the expert way that Gibson has bought into it and, in turn, sells it to us.

It's hard to say whether audiences will be able to get past Gibson's bizarre personal behavior and appreciate his performance for what it is — I tried to do that and, yet, I have to admit that some of the more violent scenes took me out of the moment.

But, like the actor's tabloid rants, "The Beaver" is disturbing, compelling stuff.

droe@statesman.com; 912-5923