A Failed Attempt At Redemption Through Puppetry

THE BEAVER (Dir. Jodie Foster, 2011)

So, here's this film's story - a toy company CEO is in a deep dark funk. He's uncommunicative with his wife and kids, and his business is faltering. His wife kicks him out of the house. While discarding some of his things, he finds an old ratty beaver puppet in a dumpster and puts it on his left arm, During a drunken night in his hotel room with 2 failed suicide attempts, he crashes onto the floor with a TV falling down on him.

When he awakes his puppet gives him a pep talk, and immediately he starts to get his life back together. "The Beaver," as it wants to be called, is now calling the shots to the puzzlement of his family and the employees.

Got that? Not sure I do. What makes it so hard to swallow is that Mel Gibson plays the despondent puppeteer. Gibson's popularity has waned in recent years because of famously controversial behavior, and part of this film's hype is that it could re-boot his career.

Don't count on it. This film, inexplicably directed by Jodie Foster (also appearing as Gibson's wife), is a dreary experience that has no insights into depression, delusion, or beaver puppets.

You might expect a comedy from a scenario where a man communicates only through a puppet, with a thick Cockey accent, but as The Beaver says at one point: "There's nothing funny about it."

There's a subplot involving Gibson's son (Anton Yelchin) dealing with teen angst through a budding romance with Jennifer Lawrence (WINTER'S BONE) as a valedictorian cheerleader who hires him to write her graduation speech. It really doesn't fit, but then nothing in this film fits.

The implausibility factor here is overwhelming, and not just from the basic premise. When Gibson develops and markets a bestselling wood-cutting kit, it hits such a false note that it's deafening. Likewise Foster's one-note reaction to her husband's dementia.

An unpleasant sex scene with Foster getting creeped out by the puppet is another scene that doesn't gel.

I'm not a fan of Gibson, but there were times his performance showed real effort and passion. However it's in vain as this is strained, self conscious material that never clicks.

In the last third, THE BEAVER takes some disturbing and drastic turns that don't add up, especially when considering how tidy the ending is.

What first time screenwriter Kyle Killen, and Foster were going for here beats me.

Basically this film is a bunch of bad ideas desperately assembled in a lame attempt to form an inspirational story.

It's a failure as a comeback project for Gibson, and will probably be only remembered as a weird misguided movie that came and went with little fanfare. That is, if it's remembered at all.

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THE HANGOVER PART II: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE HANGOVER PART II (Dir. Todd Phillips, 2011)

The sequel to the largest grossing R-Rated comedy of all time is exactly everything I thought it would be. I haven't seen such a blatant retread of a huge hit's premise and jokes since AIRPLANE II: THE SEQUEL.

Again we have Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, and Ed Helms playing the man-child protagonists who wake up to find themselves in way over their heads after a night of stag party debauchery. I actually recycled that sentence largely from my review of the first one - I figure if they can recycle it, so can I.

This time the guys are in Bangkok. Helms is about to get married to Jamie Chung, and Cooper, Galifianakis, and Justin Bartha are there to attend the wedding.

Chung has a disapproving father (Nirut Sirichanya) who humiliates Helms at their reception dinner, so you know Helms will stand up to him in the end.

Bartha went missing in the first one, so their idea of mixing it up is to have Chung's younger brother (Mason Lee) disappear.

The night starts at a resort in Thailand where Helms is talked into having just one beer with the "Wolfpack," as Galifianakis calls them, on the beach with a bonfire. What could go wrong?

Just like before (okay I'll stop saying that - it could get exhausting) the camera pans up to the sky and the screen fades. We flash forward and we're in a scummy hotel room in the city of Bangkok. Galifianakis's hair head has been shaved, Helms has a Mike Tyson tattoo on his face, there's a capuchin monkey jumping around, and there's a severed finger with Lee's school ring on it among all the bottles, cocaine, and other debris from the previous night.

Oh yeah, there's also the crazy coked up Ken Jeong who Galifianakis invited as his +1 to the wedding sleeping on the floor.

So the 'Wolfpack" hit the streets to figure out what happened to Lee and they wind through a convoluted scenario involving Monks, she-male prostitutes, Russian thugs, and an obligatory car-chase that includes the classically clichéd fruit cart scene.

The problem is this material is geared more for shock value than laughs. The leads have an energy going in their performances, playing amusingly off each other, but while Cooper and Helms almost overdo their effort, Galifianakis doesn't seem to care.


Galifianakis can be funny with just an expression, and his eccentric childishness has its moments, but wears thin way before the halfway mark.

In the middle of it all there's a surprising appearance by Paul Giamatti, who has a nice sharp scene or 2 - I guess to go further about it would be a Spoiler!

Otherwise, despite the absorbing locale, and a few good lines here and there, THE HANGOVER PART II is a tedious, definitively unnecessary, and supremely unsatisfying sequel.

Actually the photos showing what happened during the guys' blackouts during the end credits are kind of funny, but again that's something they did in the first one.

More later...

Product Place Me

POM WONDERFUL PRESENTS: THE GREATEST STORY EVER SOLD (Dir. Morgan Spurlock, 2011)

Morgan Spurlock made a name for himself with SUPER SIZE ME, a documentary in which he filmed himself eating McDonald’s food for one month. He followed that up with WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN?, another ambitiously gimmicky documentary that was equally inconsequential.

Spurlock’s latest film is his gimmickiest for sure – it’s a movie about product placement that was financed by, wait for it, product placement!

So, a lot of this movie is a series of pitch meetings to companies that he wants to feature in his film. Spurlock approaches all the major, and not so major, corporations (well, not McDonald’s for obvious reasons) and gets rejected by most of them (“that doesn’t sound like a movie I’d have any interest in seeing” says one of the folks he cold calls), but a number of companies sign on. The one that ponied up the biggest bucks ($1 million), POM Wonderful, was rewarded with their name above the title, in case you’re wondering about the film’s bloated name.

Spurlock pads the film with interviews with film makers like J.J. Abrams, Peter Berg, Quentin Tarantino, and Brett Ratner who have differing views on product placement. Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, and On The Media host Bob Garfield also appear. Spurlock asks Nader if there’s any truth in advertising. Nader responds: “Yeah, if the advertiser tells you they’re lying.”

In one of the film’s most interesting bit is a visit to San Paulo in Brazil, a city that has banned billboards and advertising of every kind from its streets and buildings. Spurlock hammers the point though with resident’s comments, and his own obvious statements: “Look, that taxi has no ad on it!” We get it.

Spurlock is never as funny, insightful, and engaging as he thinks he is, and there’s too many stretches where the film has nothing to say about its subject. I have no idea if Spurlock thinks product placement is good or bad, I’d guess that he thinks it’s good if it benefits him.

There’s a lot of stuff a good documentarian could do with the premise. It would be cool to learn the history of advertising on the big screen, what were the biggest deals made, with more insight into the argument over its merits.

Instead we get Spurlock walking around a grocery store making lame jokes about products. He’s particularly amused about the shampoo for humans and horses Mane ‘n Tail. He giggles as he phones them, but I sure didn’t.

And then there's his cutesy mock commercial he makes for his sponsors. Really icky stuff.

Spurlock’s Michael Moore methods all fall flat once again.

In one of the pitch meetings in the first third, Spurlock says that “the goal of this whole film is transparency. You're going to see the whole thing take place from beginning to end.”

The film, and Spurlock, are indeed transparent - I can see right through them.

More later...