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One of my all time favorites.

Instant Favorite.

hyped garbage

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The plot may sound completely ridiculous, but The Beaver does manage to pull off a serious drama with a puppet in the leading role. Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster give excellent performances, as usual, but the problem with this movie is the tone - it's uneven. It seems like they were trying to please two different groups at the same time, but neither group will be really satisfied with how it all wraps up. Still, it's worth a watch.

This didn't work for me on any level. Dark, sad and uninteresting, I couldn't find sympathy for any of the characters involved here.The Beaver has a bit of an "American Beauty" vibe to it (except its not funny or clever) Following a depressed father and businessman through the grips of mental illness. After his wife kicks him out and he fails a suicide attempt, he begins communicating through a beaver puppet that ultimately takes over his life.This didn't work for me as a dark comedy either, about the only good thing I can say is that Mel's cockney accent (impersonation of Michael Cain) through the puppet is well done, as was his portrayal in general because this must have been a difficult role to play. Still not enough to save this for me though.Great cast here but Mel has zero chemistry with Jodi Foster who plays his wife and I was super surprised to see Jennifer Lawrence in one of the secondary roles involving the teenaged son (Anton Yelchin) but that side story was meh too.. 05.27.14

I'd definitely say that The Beaver's most demented "WTF? moment" was when Walter (while having sex with his wife) still kept the beaver puppet stuck on his hand.... In that perplexing moment which I would call "sheer idiocy", I'd say that that sort of frickin' nonsense takes the cake.... (Sheesh!) I think that this film really sent out all kinds of totally screwy messages about dealing with matters concerning serious psychosis. While watching this flaw-infested film I kept asking myself - "What the hell is director Jodie Foster trying to tell me with this crap?" One thing that I'm certain of is that, at some time in her life, Jodie Foster must've had to deal with some of her own personal issues with her real-life father in order to take it upon herself to direct a film of this one's dysfunctional nature.With "The Beaver" it totally killed me that at the absolute peak of his lunacy, Walter Black was at his most creative, actually managing to save his faltering company from bankruptcy. And, on top of that, his screwed-up beaver-psychosis made him a media-celebrity who was winning rounds of applause and approval from the entire American population.(See what I mean about being sent screwy messages?) It looked to me as though Walter's schizophrenic state had actually elevated him to a "super-hero" status in the eyes of so many.One thing that I couldn't figure out was, if Walter was refusing to take off the beaver hand-puppet for any reason, whatsoever, then, how the hell was he able to get his suit-jacket and shirts on and off? And, like, when one eats steak one's got to use 2 hands for cutting it, right? So, was Walter getting the beaver to saw his meat for him with its teeth, or something? In summing up this film's story in a nutshell, I view its symbolism as being very clear to the fact that Walter, literally, had his hand shoved up the beaver's ass.I resent Jodie Foster for this terrible attempt at trying to manipulate my emotions. I'm really beginning to hate these sorts of films where a great tragedy has to take place in a broken family before its apathetic members start to really care about one another. (Give me a break!) And finally - As far as Mr. Mel Gibson goes, I think that he was totally the wrong actor for the part of Walter Black. Let's face it, Gibson is just way too superficial as an actor to be at all convincing in a demanding role such as this one.It was so obvious to me that Gibson (with, or without the frickin' beaver) couldn't carry this film all on his own. And that's why so much screen-time was invested in paying attention to Black's teenage son, Porter.Putting Porter's predictable, little "cutie-pie" romance with Norah aside, I thought this boy of Black's was one very dangerous, little psycho (like father, like son?) with his neurotic notes pasted up in his room, and, especially, him repeatedly smashing his head at full-force against the bedroom wall until his noggin made a gaping hole right through to the other side.(Of course, Porter's head was never bruised after any of these brutal assaults. Nor did anyone in the house ever hear these thundering bouts of insanity.... (Very peculiar, indeed) Needless to say, The Beaver was a box-office flop. People stayed away from this one in droves. Its budget was $21 million. It has since grossed approx. $1 million.All-in-all - The Beaver was shallow, sugar-coated worthlessness. Thank goodness this tripe only lasted for 90 minutes.

Another old(er) movie that was sadly eclipsed due to the very public antics of its (now) pariah like celebrity star, Mel Gibson. A veritable directorial achievement (Jodie Foster, after 'Little man Tate'), this is an engaging drama from beginning-to- end, and doesn't quite let go.Quite possibly some of the darkest thematic material ever put on celluloid. And one of the most courageous. Both in terms of the choices inherent in the material, and quite possibly the director following the vision laid out in the screenplay, without making the compromises that studio heads are prone to doing, and prevailing, at that.Difficult to watch for most of its running time, borrowing its motif from one of my favorite classics 'Harvey' (and kinda uniquely 'extending' it, not just to fit this milieu, but also to to help it find its own voice out there), this has many things going for it, including its casting, esp. Anton Yelchin.One more strength, I felt, lay in its narrative, that doesn't spend much time on context/back-story and simply dives into the main conceit of it all, as it were. The timing when Foster chose to cast Gibson in this one, and Gibson himself agreeing to take on the main role (with both Steve Carell and Jim Carrey electing to give this one a miss), foibles and all, is unique, though it didn't do anything for its box-office. Definitely deserved to be seen when it came out, and deserving of its audience anyway, this one hopefully will find its cult following sometime (counting on that, since this deserves an audience).