The split personality that comes with celebrity can be tricky: Mel Gibson's behavior over the last few years makes it almost impossible now to watch him without thinking of the tabloid catastrophe he's become.
If anyone needed to let anything, even a puppet, do the talking for him, it's Gibson. Luckily, that's what happens in "The Beaver," Jodie Foster's oddly engrossing, off-kilter drama.
Gibson plays Walter, the CEO of a toy company who slips into a midlife depression that incapacitates him.
His wife Meredith (Foster) kicks him out for the good of their two boys, teenage Porter (Anton Yelchin) and grade schooler Henry (Riley Thomas Stewart).
Alone and suicidal, Walter is saved when he spots a mangy beaver puppet in the trash. Drawn to the toy, Walter begins a weird form of self-therapy: He can engage with his family and the world when he speaks — in an Australian accent — through the puppet he calls The Beaver.
Suddenly, he's fun and successful, as long as you forget he's talking through a puppet.
Walter's youngest kid loves it, though everyone else tolerates The Beaver, thinking it’s temporary. But without him, the sad Walter returns.
Foster, whose previous directorial efforts ("Little Man Tate," "Home for the Holidays") are underappreciated little dissections about family outcasts, makes "The Beaver" into a similar meditation on sons fighting inner urges to follow in a father's flawed footsteps.
As his dad keeps life at arm's length, Porter pursues a pretty classmate (Jennifer Lawrence) until he’s hindered by dishonesty and distance, traits he inherited from Walter.
Distance is what's required here to care about Gibson. Though Kyle Killen's script becomes trite and predictable, Gibson delivers in an uncompromising way. Had Robin Williams or Tom Hanks taken the role, the cutesiness would be unbearable. Oddly, Gibson's public implosion helps "The Beaver," like the beaver helps him.
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