The fact is, "The Beaver" is not about giving critics opportunities to lash out at Mel Gibson. Nor is it about Mel Gibson, per se. "The Beaver" is about the all-too-real effects of depression on a family - a sobering topic that is not nearly as fun as making a piñata out of a former matinee idol. Fortunately, the film never wields its subject matter like the lethal weapon one may expect. Far from it, actually. Foster competently walks the line between real life darkness (lead characters Walter and Meredith Black's marriage and family lives are crumbling in a very honest way) and cinematic quirk (their name's are "Black", for crying out loud). Unfortunately, the quirk overload threatens to derail the whole ride.
"The Beaver" is a competently made if a little too clever film that harkens back to the decade-ago heyday of American movies that probed the confused male psyche in contemporary society. ("Fight Club" is one example; "American Beauty" is an even better one.) Gibson plays an affluent husband and father who is president of a struggling toy company. Even as we're checking in the film, he is already emotionally checked out.
Like "American Beauty" before it, "The Beaver" is a well-directed film from a screenplay that is a bit too on the nose with its metaphors. For instance, Foster, as Gibson's troubled wife, is chronically living in a state of involuntary ups and downs, her life always being jerked one way or the other. Her career? Designing roller coasters. Or how about the biggie, the titular puppet? Gibson is clearly the failed puppeteer (corporately and domestically speaking) who can only return from the brink by communicating via the ragged plush beaver on his hand.
But he's not the only one putting words into the mouths of others. The oldest son (Anton Yelchin, in an admirable turn), on the brink of high school graduation, has made a brisk business of successfully writing papers for his fellow students by emulating their voices. We're made to understand he has an inherent gift for this. The apple never falls far from the tree, no matter how badly the boy wants to distance himself from his messed-up father. (And that would be pretty darn badly - his room is literally decorated with personal notes on how not to become like his old man.) Only later do we find out that father hatred is yet another passed-down trait of the men in this family. (And of course, those familiar with how Gibson's real father's outspoken nature has led to past trouble for the actor won't be able to help being reminded of that.) In what is perhaps the film's single biggest hint of major post-production damage control, it's the son who all but takes over the third act of the of the story, as Gibson is relegated to the sidelines for long stretches late in the game.
In the end, it's all about Foster's roller coaster. (This is her project, after all.) That the film leaves us not with a black cloud over our own heads is a stroke of gratitude, not disingenuousness. But nonetheless, it wears its occasional quirk as a badge of honesty, which sometimes works, sometimes does not. The film dares to ask us to suspend disbelief in some downright loopy ways. A self-help beaver puppet from the dumpster? A mass-marketed woodcarving kit for little tykes as the next toy store phenomenon?? High school cheerleader Jennifer Lawrence as a repressed graffiti artist??? Yeah okay Jodie Foster, you hooked me well enough and strung me along - right down to the obligatory Gibson scenes of intense physical torment and self-mutilation. The film isn't bad at all, even if it's far from perfect. Mel Gibson proves that even now, as an actor, he's nobody's puppet - even if the film can't let us forget the man behind the curtain.
- Jim Tudor