(no subject)
Hannah and I just finished watching a movie called The Beaver. I rented it primarily because I wanted another look at the acting skills of Jennifer Lawrence, who has a small but important role in it. She will be starring in The Hunger Games, a movie for which I have high hopes, so I wanted reason to be encouraged.
The movie trailers implied that it was a whimsical, perhaps bittersweet comedy, about a man (played by Mel Gibson) with such strong depression and social anxiety that he finally starts coping by speaking entirely through a beaver puppet. Directed by, and starring as the main character's wife, is Jodie Foster. So, I figured, maybe it will be pretty good.
It exceeded my expectations. At the end, Hannah asked me how long it had been. I told her about an hour and a half, and she was surprised; she said it had seemed like it was about 10 minutes. She thought it was really good.
Mel's character started doing a lot better once the beaver began talking for him. The beaver was confident, plain spoken, and unafraid of risk taking. The sub-plot was about Mel's son. His son's greatest fear in life was that he might turn out to be exactly like his dysfunctional father. He was glad when his mother kicked his father out, and angry when she let him move back in. At school, he met a girl (played by Jennifer Lawrence) who needed his help: the school valedictorian, a cheerleader, a person who seemingly had everything going her way, except the ability to let herself feel her real feelings.
So, there you go. I will not give away what happens. You may think it ends with standard Hollywood fare: everyone learns and grows and ends up happily ever after. You would be wrong. It instead takes such a hard 90 degree turn that I can totally understand why this movie did not succeed financially (budget: $20 million; box office take: $1 million [www.imdb.com]). But then, I don't always like it when movies go the way I expect them to go. Watching The Beaver was time well spent.
The movie trailers implied that it was a whimsical, perhaps bittersweet comedy, about a man (played by Mel Gibson) with such strong depression and social anxiety that he finally starts coping by speaking entirely through a beaver puppet. Directed by, and starring as the main character's wife, is Jodie Foster. So, I figured, maybe it will be pretty good.
It exceeded my expectations. At the end, Hannah asked me how long it had been. I told her about an hour and a half, and she was surprised; she said it had seemed like it was about 10 minutes. She thought it was really good.
Mel's character started doing a lot better once the beaver began talking for him. The beaver was confident, plain spoken, and unafraid of risk taking. The sub-plot was about Mel's son. His son's greatest fear in life was that he might turn out to be exactly like his dysfunctional father. He was glad when his mother kicked his father out, and angry when she let him move back in. At school, he met a girl (played by Jennifer Lawrence) who needed his help: the school valedictorian, a cheerleader, a person who seemingly had everything going her way, except the ability to let herself feel her real feelings.
So, there you go. I will not give away what happens. You may think it ends with standard Hollywood fare: everyone learns and grows and ends up happily ever after. You would be wrong. It instead takes such a hard 90 degree turn that I can totally understand why this movie did not succeed financially (budget: $20 million; box office take: $1 million [www.imdb.com]). But then, I don't always like it when movies go the way I expect them to go. Watching The Beaver was time well spent.