The Beaver (2011)

From warm inception to curious production to maligned release, The Beaver was always a weird prospect. But at the same time- a film made by and starring Jodie Foster, about Mel Gibson talking through a puppet would have been completely different if it had come about in the 90's, when you imagine that. It sorta looks like one of each modern day crappy Jim Carrey kids movies.
Today, it's a Hydrogen bomb of 'Meta' seeing a manic depressive Mel Gibson deride social conventions and push away the people around him with his behaviour, while Jodie Foster (prolific colleagues, if not close friends) tells him "We love you and want you to get better but we can't help if you keep pushing us away..."
The strange thing about the film is that it's neither the horrible saccharine family movie nor the dynamic heartfelt family drama it wants to be - it stays in the middleground. It explores the strong ideas like repeating the failings of your parents and coping with grief when the world around you continues and how you deal with that but then the whole puppet macguffin undoes the thread of the issues in the film. But then if it wasn't really the puppet, why make the effort to watch? I hate that kinda of earnest, worthy kind of social family drama.
The acting across the board is really good but that's to be expected from Gibson playing nutso and Foster playing a concerned mother (they've had practice) but Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence are especially good at playing dysfunctional teenagers (they be playing them for a while !) trying to resolve their own issues. In fact,Gibson is far better at playing The Beaver, a fake Australian anthropomorphic stuffed toy then a middle-aged man suffering with depression.
I kinda felt bored during the first half of the film but as the progressed, i really began to connect with it. It begins to develop good messages about feeling alone and how you counteract them though engaging with the people you care about for not disconnecting from them. Gibson needs to do something completely wild and original and i think he could legitimately come back and return to his previous profile in the movies and i think maybe The Beaver was a step in the right direction but it's not far enough a step, he needs to completely reinventing himself because the best parts of the film are where he's least playing Mel Gibson...

I watched The Beaver (2011) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Bringing Up Baby (1950)...