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The Beaver

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The Beaver (2011)

May. 05,2011
|
6.6
|
PG-13
| Drama
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Suffering from a severe case of depression, toy company CEO Walter Black begins using a beaver hand puppet to help him open up to his family. With his father seemingly going insane, adolescent son Porter pushes for his parents to get a divorce.

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Reviews

Micransix
2011/05/05

Crappy film

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Intcatinfo
2011/05/06

A Masterpiece!

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StyleSk8r
2011/05/07

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

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Scarlet
2011/05/08

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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thierrydewijn
2011/05/09

It seems that Mel Gibson had quite some experience with depression himself. and boy, that shows in this movie. He was real, and the treatment with the beaver puppet he found in the garbage was a a gift from God, when everything els had failed. Sometimes in life we just take ourselves too serious. I had a couple of great laughs during the movie. And by the way Jodie Foster and Jennifer Laurence are also in top shape. Just a lovely movie to get over it....and not jump out of the window or do something else supid when you feel low. Just go and watch this!

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slightlymad22
2011/05/10

The Beaver (2011)Possibly the most interesting movie in Gibson's Filmography. Certainly the hardest to review. No doubt, you have heard a lot about this movie!! This movie was a casualty of Gibson's scandals. Following Apocalypto and Edge Of Darkness, It looked like he would survive the DUI, but when tapes of Gibson's serious personal rage surfaced, things were very different. If you have listened to the Gibson tapes from the summer of 2010, odds are he said something that offended you.  He said something that offended absolutely everyone!! There were allegations of domestic violence and even more racism in there too. At the time Gibson was cast, it looked like Jodie Foster was throwing a lifeline (just like he did to Downey Jr.) to her friend when no one else would, Filming was completed in 2009 and it looked like it might survive the storm of Gibson's DUI.  But when the tapes broke, despite Foster defending Gibson, it got put on a shelf. Now all that is out of the way, do you know any one who has actually seen it?  I had not seen it!! And I had to buy it (50p from CEX) to watch it for myself now. Could it really be THAT bad??Plot In A Paragraph: A troubled husband (Gibson) adopts a beaver hand-puppet as his sole means of communicating.The Beaver is a very brave movie!! And I'm not just talking about the casting of Gibson!! When you hear the premise of this movie, you have certain expectations. It sounds like a comedy.  The kind that might star Jim Carrey or Will Ferrell. As I found out, it is nothing like those movies. It is deadly serious about how it deals with depression and the darkness that comes with it. This movie goes into some serious places that I never expected it to!! Sometimes I couldn't believe what I was seeing and I was hooked.Truthfully, I still don't think the movie works 100% and I don't know why, as it is competently directed and superbly acted Gibson gives it his all and Foster is OK, but for me it's Anton Yelchin (as Gibson's son) and Jennifer Lawrence (head cheerleader) in a subplot that stand out!! They are both superb!! But it's Gibson's movie and he is superb as the broken man who is struggling with his demons (art imitating life??) and It's a shame this performance hasn't been seen more. The Beaver is actually a fascinating watch, that I think people should at least check out once. I probably won't rewatch it, unless I'm showing someone it. But when it was finally released in 2011, it was a bomb (Not making the Top 100 highest grossers of the year) Even without the second scandal, I don't think it would have been a huge hit.  But because of the tapes, we never got a chance to find out!!

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larry.launders
2011/05/11

I saw this movie last night for the first time. I've done my best to remove any possible spoilers in this review. I had heard about it when it came out, and it had always been on my radar, so I finally made time to watch it. First off, I suspect we need to discuss Mel Gibson. If I recall, this was his first big movie after getting splattered across the press for some poor behavior, and the general movie-viewing public largely turned against him.Well, I am not here to comment on any off-screen antics, merely the movie and the talent involved. Mel Gibson is a tremendous actor. That statement is very well displayed in this movie. He is helped by a very strong supporting cast, and an interesting story about a subject that, overall, nobody is comfortable talking about or dealing with. Having read the trivia, I get why it took Jodie Foster awhile to get a backer for the movie because she did not want to change the ending. I found myself with a mix of thoughts on that - I side with Ms. Foster in not wanting to change the ending of the story, however I might have fought for changing how it was displayed/portrayed to the audience. Not that what she chose didn't work, it did, but I'm considering the overall 'feel' of the movie at that point. Honestly, from what I had remembered from the trailers, I thought this would be more comedic. It is still a serious subject matter, and there are comedic moments to be had, don't get me wrong! But this does lean very much more to the serious side. It of course also includes a few other sub-plots to round out the overall story - the two children provide their own personalities and issues that need to be dealt with; and the wife trying to balance everything going on along with maintaining her own responsibilities as well as sanity is expertly done by Ms. Foster. And the end makes sense, ultimately. And it provides some things the story needs to tie things up, and to make it a movie worth watching, albeit a bit...tragically? Or at the least, unfortunately. I do recommend watching The Beaver. While it includes Mel Gibson, and dear readers I semi-understand those that won't watch anything with him in it, but remember he's not the only person in it. :-) It does deal with the very serious subject of depression, and is well worth the watch.

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sesht
2011/05/12

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).

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