I really like Jody Foster and wanted to like this movie that she has been making the rounds on talk shows for. I found Gibson's character and his family totally unsympathetic, just sad. The therapeutic puppet strategy which I believe is used often with children just didn't seem fitting to me. The whole thing seemed too strange and too painful to watch. The plot meandered all over the map and didn't hold my interest. The flopping between comedy and dark drama was unsettling and jarring. Very unrealistic to my thinking. Perhaps a less rough hewn actor or cuter puppet might have carried it better. Some of the puppet sequences seemed twilight zone creepy. I came out feeling unsatisfied and depressed.
Review of The Beaver
