The Beaver

Director: Jodie Foster Jodie Foster

Overview

A successful businessman and loving father finds a unique means of coping with his debilitating mental illness in this drama from director Jodie Foster. When Walter Black (Mel Gibson) finds himself stuck in a downward spiral, the chance discovery of a beat-up beaver hand puppet offers him a unique opportunity to pull himself back from the brink. By using The Beaver to speak with others, Walter develops the abilities to express the suppressed feelings that were slowly eating him away from the inside.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/23/2011
UPC:	0025192108471
Original Release:	2011
Rating:	PG-13
Source:	LIONSGATE - 600000-AEC LGE
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:31:00
Sales rank:	44,500

Special Features

Audio commentary with director Jodie Foster; Deleted scenes; Everything is Going to Be O.K. - Featurette on the making of The Beaver

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Mel Gibson	Walter Black
Jodie Foster	Meredith Black
Anton Yelchin	Porter Black
Riley Thomas Stewart	Henry Black,Himself
Jennifer Lawrence	Norah
Zachary Booth	Jared
Cherry Jones	Vice President
Michael Rivera	Hector
Kelly Coffield Park	Norah's Mom
Jeffrey Corbett	Volunteer Dad,Actor
Baylen Thomas	Skeptical Man
Sam Breslin Wright	Man
Kris Arnold	Waiter
Elizabeth Kaledin	Reporter
Folake Olowofoyeku	Nurse
Lorna Pruce	Nurse
Terry Gross	Herself
Bill Massof	Prosthetic Technician
Ernest E. Brown	Drum circle Drumer
Barbara Ann Davison	Seamstress
Marcelo Zarvos	Composer

Technical Credits

Kyle Killen

Jodie Foster	Director
Kyle Killen	Screenwriter
Steve Golin	Producer
Keith Redmon	Producer
Ann Ruark	Producer
Mohammed Mubarak Al Mazrouei	Executive Producer
Paul Green	Executive Producer
Jonathan King	Executive Producer
Jeff Skoll	Executive Producer
Avy Kaufman	Casting
George Aguilar	Stunts
Matthew Blades	Key Grip
Jimmy Sabat	Sound Mixer
Roy Waldspurger	Sound Effects

Editorial Reviews

This eccentric drama - a collaboration between director/co-star Jodie Foster and lead actor Mel Gibson - emerged following an ugly period for Gibson that included accusations of onscreen racism in The Passion of the Christ, drunken anti-Semitic tirades, and much-publicized familial troubles and divorce. Watching The Beaver, one wants to forget about those real-life events and focus on the material itself, but that's practically impossible: the tale of Walter Black (Gibson), an emotionally and psychologically damaged husband and father who seeks redemption via a hand puppet, suggests unmistakable off-camera parallels for its conflicted lead actor. The movie is admittedly fascinating on that level, for those who care. But it's also an inept and misguided mess. The puppet concept doesn't feel particularly off-target as presented here, but scribe Kyle Killen's screenplay is klutzy and poorly structured. He spends far too much time away from the fascinating Walter and focuses instead on the relationship of Walter's son with the high school class valedictorian; that's completely irrelevant and fatuous. Moreover, a key phase of the script that turns Walter into a national media fixture brings the picture to a screeching halt. Killen depicts public opinion of Walter and the Beaver as zipping back and forth between hero worship and vilification, and the script never takes the time to make any of those enormous seismic shifts remotely credible. Most unforgivable, however, is the film's conclusion, which will not be disclosed here but proposes one of the most bizarre cures for psychosis in movie history - one so violent and brutal that it has no place in a film of this nature (to say nothing of its laughable implausibility). Actors Gibson and Foster are each superb, imparting to their characters laudable emotional and psychological complexities. But those evocations need to be done in the service of more mature, intelligent and sophisticated writing, especially given the delicate nature of the story.