Review: THE BEAVER

Granted, Mel Gibson is a nut case, and he’s messed up his life big time;  but, he’s still a fine actor – his HAMLET remains one of my all-time favorites.  Soooo, I went to see his new film, THE BEAVER, and I’ve just saved another hour and a half of your time.  This is a movie about a seriously depressed man with a depressed family, and it is really depressing.  The brief ray of sunlight at the end doesn’t nearly make up for it.  One of the things Gibson does best, of course, is act crazy, and he does it to perfection again in this movie.  He plays a man who is so far into depression that he can no longer communicate with anyone, so , to compensate, he starts wearing a hand puppet of a beaver and talks through the puppet, with a really grteat Cockney accent for some reason.  The pupet becomes real, not only to the character, but to the viewer as well – it’s very well done.  And the acting is great – so it all adds up to serious depression.  If you want to see it, go quickly; I don’t think it will be around for long.  Not many people want to go to a movie to get depressed, even one that’s well made and well acted.  Jodie Foster produced and directed the movie,and plays the long-suffering wife.  It’s all very well done, but you come out feeling really depressed.  How do you rate something like that?  How about a 6.