The Beaver (Film Review)

2011 Summit Entertainment
Directed by: Jodie Foster; Written by: Kyle Killen
Starring: Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Anton Yelchin, and Jennifer Lawrence
MPAA Rating: PG-13; Running Time: 91 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 6/10

Walter Black has a wife and two sons, is the CEO of a major toy company, and is so depressed, he's lost the ability to speak. After his wife, Meredith, finally loses patience and kicks him out, Walter decides to end it all, but before he can complete the act of self-deletion, he finds a beaver puppet in the dumpster. Walter puts the puppet on his arm, and suddenly his will to live returns. He can even speak again...but only as the beaver. Soon, the beaver has turned Walter's entire life around. His youngest son loves spending time with him. His ideas for the once floundering toy company have lifted it out of the economic doldrums. His wife starts to enjoy his company again. His oldest son, Porter, seems to resent him even more now, but Porter has a love interest played by Jennifer Lawrence to focus his attention upon. However, as Porter starts to show some of the same tendencies as his father, and as Meredith begins to grow tired of only interacting with Walter through a hand puppet, something becomes clear: they don't need the beaver...they need Walter.
The weirdest element of 2011's Jodie Foster-directed The Beaver is surprisingly its most grounded. As Walter Black, Mel Gibson brings his considerable A-game, conveying Walter's crushing sadness primarily through his eyes in the film's first act, before spending the majority of the rest of the film talking in a grimy British beaver accent through a puppet. I firmly believe that the vast majority of humanity experiences pain the same way, even though the circumstances surrounding that pain might be vastly different. Walter's pain in this film, due in no small part to Gibson's incredible performance, is universal, and his beaver puppet coping mechanism is strangely relatable. HOWEVER, the details...
Walter's son, Porter, is a brilliant, but troubled teen. He makes money forging essays for his classmates. The class valedictorian, played by Jennifer Lawrence, asks him to write her graduation speech. It turns out, though, that Lawrence isn't just a genius who, like Porter, has been accepted into an Ivy League school, but also one of the greatest graffiti artists in all of whatever wealthy state this film is supposed to be set in. However, she stopped doing graffiti because her brother died. So in summation, the extremely (NOT) relatable storyline for Porter is: Porter is not only a genius who has gotten into an Ivy League school, but an unscrupulous forger who makes money writing his classmates' essays. There is a girl in his class who looks like Jennifer Lawrence. That girl is romantically interested in Porter. She also is a genius and the class valedictorian. She wants to pay Porter to write a speech for her. Porter wants her to become a famous graffiti artist again. Also, his dad, a toy company CEO, will only talk to him in a gruff British accent, while wearing a beaver puppet. Man, that sounds exactly like my senior year of high school.
Did I mention that Meredith is a rollercoaster architect, and that the film's final scene involves the family smiling and running around, Porter and Jennifer Lawrence hand-in-hand, then riding one of Meredith's rollercoasters in sepia-toned slow motion? The positive here is that The Beaver understands pain. The negative is that The Beaver seemingly has no idea how real everyday life works. As a result, there's a moving family drama here, starring a fantastic Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster as Meredith, and the late Anton Yelchin as Porter (maybe named after Gibson's Payback character), full of some very amusing, dark, and offbeat humor, like a sex scene involving Gibson, Foster, and a very eager beaver. However, that good stuff is surrounded by nothing that feels like actual reality. In the end, The Beaver is a strange film that's most definitely worth watching once, but its considerable flaws dam up any chances it had to be a classic.