Secondly, the film starts with Walter being deeply depressed. He's got a great job and a family, but he's not happy. So why should I care if the guy is sad? And why should the filmmakers bother explaining that minor detail? I don't see any reason why I should root for the character at all, and I don't feel sorry for him. I was glad when he gets kicked out by his wife Meredith, played by Foster.
There were so many missed opportunities with the introduction of the Beaver. When Walter finds him in the dumpster, he's just laying there in plain sight. And then Walter just picks it up. Why? I guess, just because. And he does so right after throwing away some of his belongings, which apparently, had been important enough that they were the things he chose to take when his wife kicked him out.
When the Beaver starts talking, Foster makes sure the audience knows right away that it is Walter moving its mouth and providing the voice. I think it would have been better to have some ambiguity at first, especially when the film begins with narration by the Beaver's voice. They could have tried a quirky approach with the puppet seemingly coming to life before revealing that it's Walter controlling it. Better yet, since this happens after a television falls on his head after a failed suicide attempt, just have Walter conversing with himself in different voices, and then cut to a wider shot where you see him animating the puppet.
When Meredith comes home to find Walter with their young son Henry, they could have showed the audience how great a father Walter could be as the two of them play with and talk to the Beaver. As his wife, Meredith may be concerned that Walter has returned, but we see her being happy for their son. And then it becomes apparent her husband is using the Beaver for more than just play, which confirms to her that he really is nuts.
Ditto for when their teenage son Porter comes home.
As for Porter, he gets approached by the popular, beautiful and smart Norah to write her graduation speech for her. Now, she is a 4.0 student, yet she can't muster enough effort come up with something on her own. Gee, I wonder if the two of them will end up together in the end. Maybe she only wanted an excuse to get to know him. Even then, it still seems ludicrous that she wouldn't come up with something else to say to him other than the fact that he's just really good at it.
It would have been more interesting if she had just been so busy with so many other things that she just didn't want to bother with the speech. Maybe she didn't seek him out and hand him a note to rendezvous, but instead casually asked him if he would be interested. And maybe he bugs her because he needs to get to know her to ghost write properly. Instead, it's just like, "Hey, write my paper." "Okay. But I need to get to know you." "Okay. Come to my house and I'll reveal all my family secrets even though that probably won't be pertinent to a graduation speech that will be delivered in front of everybody at the high school." "Okay."
And then one day Walter comes to work with a talking beaver puppet. And everybody there is dumbfounded, confused. Even though it is a freaking toy company. And Walter is the boss. So the boss of a toy company comes in with a talking beaver puppet, and the underlings are judgemental instead of curious, interested, amused.
Walter hands out cards to everyone explaining why he talks to his beaver. So the guy who has just tried to kill himself apparently cares enough about other people's opinion that the types up index cards to explain his behavior.
So much about this film seems to rely on the simple premise of a guy talking to his beaver. There's not much else apart from that. The Beaver itself doesn't exactly have a lot of personality either. It speaks in cockney, for some reason. But accent alone is not character.
Beavers are mammals who surround themselves in water for safety. They constantly build and rebuild their homes. They seem to always be working. They are monogamous. "Beaver" is also slang for vagina, as I'm sure you already know. A vagina is a pussy, which is a derogatory term for a coward.
For a story about a man struggling with his homelife and his career, the filmmakers failed to make a lot of these connections.
Producer Steve Golin was involved with "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Being John Malkovich". I find that very interesting because I wonder what Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze could have done with this story, not that it was a great screenplay to begin with. Apparently, Steve Carrell and Jim Carrey were considered for the role of Walter, but I don't know if that would have made a big difference if it had been either of them instead of Gibson. According to Wikipedia:
The film's director Foster opined that the film did not do well with American audiences because it was a comedy-drama and “And very often Americans are not comfortable with (that).”I would say that the film did not do well because it was intended to be a comedy-drama and Jodie Foster is not exactly comfortable with that, despite what she might think. When I think of comedy, Jodie Foster is not the first name that comes to mind. She mentions in the commentary that there was an earlier draft of the script which was of a funnier tone, but they cut out some parts of it. Time and again, she keeps mentioning editing out some of the more comic elements. It's amazing how one can lose focus. They probably kept chipping away and chipping away at a screenplay they initially loved until it became what it is.
There are many who would hear the term "beaver" and immediately chuckle and laugh, but the film "The Beaver" is really not very funny.
I don't recommend putting this on your queue if you are looking for laughs. Instead, watch "Unhappily Ever After", a sit-com about a nutty dad who lives with a talking bunny. It's not available on Netflix (another reason to unsubscribe), but you can probably find episodes on YouTube. Also, Nikki Cox is in it.
In conclusion, forget "The Beaver" and get some Cox.
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