BEFORE: So we've got a new backyard cat, who we call Chunk, because he (or she) is hitting up most of the houses on our block, from the look of things. There were two white & gray cats roaming around the neighborhood, begging for food, but now there's just Chunk, we're not sure what happened to the other one. Lately I've been finding Chunk in our backyard in the late mornings, laying on the barbecue grill cover or on the covered table, getting what little heat comes from the winter sun. And it only takes me a few days with a stray cat to establish a pattern - before I come out with a bowl of kibble, I'll tap the key on the window a few times, and it soon learns that this sound means I'm coming out with food, which I'll probably put down on the porch before walking away.
But in the last couple days, I noticed that Chunk was hesitant to come up on the porch, when I thought I was doing so well in establishing a bond. Then I remembered that my wife told me she saw a raccoon (well, she said "Trash Panda", but same thing) early one morning when she was out on the front porch having a smoke. We've seen them before, because we live very close to a parking lot that services a pizza place, deli and a Chinese restaurant, so that means three dumpsters with food trash. I figured there had to be a reason why Chunk was suddenly scared to come up on the porch, so I lifted one end of the cat-house we have out on the back porch, and it felt very heavy, there was definitely something in there that wouldn't come out, and after I picked up one end and dropped it a few times, a long brown snout poked out of the hole, meaning the raccoon found a warm place to hole up during the day, in between nocturnal feedings.
The cat house is a large plastic tub, insulated with styrofoam and straw, so at least one stray cat can survive the winter in our backyard. And it's clearly marked "For Cats" and "No Other Animals Allowed", so the fact that a raccoon has moved in is a clear violation of the terms of service. We went through this once before when a possum (yes, in New York City) moved into the 2nd cat house, and to get rid of the possum I needed to break open the 2nd cat house, which is why we don't have a 2nd cat house any more. Now I have to decide if I'm going to try to evict the raccoon, or just let it be for the next two months. I mean, it's one of God's creatures, but not really one that I want to have living on my back porch. Maybe this weekend I can move the cat house down off the porch into the yard, so at least there will be some distance between this wild animal and our kitchen door. Then maybe Chunk can feel better about coming up on the porch to eat.
But that's my problem, and anyway, today's film is not about a raccoon, it's about a beaver. Mel Gibson carries over from "The Singing Detective".
THE PLOT: A troubled husband and executive adopts a beaver hand-puppet as his sole means of communication.
AFTER: I guess everything is relative, because if I had just watched this film on its own, I might have declared that it was terrible - but right after "The Singing Detective", maybe it's not so bad by comparison. It's not "Hamlet", not even close, but maybe it has something to say, even if obliquely. Similar territory was also explored last year in the Showtime series "Kidding", where Jim Carrey played a children's TV show host dealing with the death of a child, with a failing marriage, another son acting up, and family issues at work. (EDIT: Jim Carrey was once attached to be in "The Beaver", but lost the role to Mel Gibson - it's possible that his interest morphed into starring in the show "Kidding".)
But it's funny the way things played out here, with three films in a row where fantasy has been blending with reality, to various degrees. "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" really featured more of an unreliable narrator, like "Girl on the Train", because the lead character was on various painkillers and also drank alcohol during the film, so he often didn't know what was going on (I felt the same way.) But he also saw ways that the murder mystery he was investigating resembled a detective novel. Then the same kind of novel started bleeding into the real-world story in "The Singing Detective". And tonight a character uses a puppet, but it's the same kind of blurring, where it's hard to tell if the man is controlling the puppet, when there's also the suggestion that the puppet might be controlling the man.
Technically this could be a form of dissociative identity disorder, where a person creates another personality in order to cope with trauma - and now I wonder if any puppeteers in the real world have ever suffered from something like this. I've got a couple of documentaries on my list about the performers behind Big Bird and Elmo, they might be worth a look-see later this year if I want to re-visit the puppetry theme later on.
But I don't think we ever learn about the initial trauma, the cause of Walter Black's initial depression. We see him moving out of his own house, presumably after a long period of depression, and then trying to commit suicide in a hotel, but initial cause of his depression remains a mystery, perhaps this is intentional. It could trace back to the death of his father, that's a safe enough bet, or perhaps the pressures of his job as a toy company CEO, but perhaps it's just a general malaise in the end. I suppose it doesn't matter.
But this is the movie where Mel Gibson plays a man who re-learns how to connect with his family and communicate with society by talking through a beaver puppet. Now, this is not ventriloquism, it's clearly the guy talking, but he's got a thick Australian accent when he's talking as the puppet, and a regular American accent when he's talking for himself. (The actor's Australian, right? So that must have been confusing, if the puppet voice was more like his natural voice...). Here, again, juxtaposition makes this film look OK, because last year I watched both "Tusk" and "The Lobster", and nobody here gets turned into a beaver, nobody gets big buck teeth and a large flat tail surgically implanted, it's just a puppet. Because there's weird, and then there's really weird.
Meanwhile, Walter Black's older son is not only feeling disconnected from him, he's planning a long road-trip on his way to college with stops at some unusual but very specific sites. And he's starting his very first romance with a girl, who's also his client, because he's making money in high school by writing essays and term papers for other students, and it seems he's got a talent for writing them in the client's "voices" so he won't get caught. I guess that's a thing, because I have a talent for writing tweets and facebook posts for my two very different bosses, and I've learned to do that in their voices - but I've known both of them for over 20 years, so it's a skill that takes time to develop. I don't know if I could have written a paper in high school as someone else.
The really disappointing character here was the wife, it feels like she was a total blank, because they didn't give her anything to do, except to react to her husband being weird. Does she have a job? Jeez, they gave the youngest son a hobby, woodworking, so he felt like a more complete character than the wife was. Jodie Foster played the wife and also directed this film, so this feels like a strange omission, how could she forget that her own character is supposed to have a life beyond her marriage? Was she so busy directing the film that she didn't realize her character wasn't really doing anything?
I'm not sure I follow the logic of the film, with regards to the use of the puppet as self-imposed therapy. Because things seem to be going well, until they're not. Somehow with the puppet he comes up with a great idea for a new toy, which also seems like a great idea, until it's not. What changed, was it just the fact that he did a TV interview with the puppet? OK, but then what changed in the relationship, what was the pivot point there?
NITPICK POINT: The class valedictorian is also a cheerleader? Uh-uh, no way, at least not in the high school I went to. I'm not just falling back on stereotypes here, though I obviously could, because I doubt the same type of girl who does cheerleading also would be at the top of her class. I don't even need to go there, because I think it's a scheduling issue - if you're in a large high school, and you want to be the valedictorian, that's a lot of work, you'd have to study hard for EVERY test, and not let your grades slip, not even a little. Maintaining that all the way to graduation would be incredibly time-consuming, and that wouldn't leave any time for extracurriculars like cheerleading. I think the reverse is also true, because cheerleading is another time-heavy commitment, which would leave less time for academics. So one way or another, this is unlikely, and I suspect it's just some kind of fantasy on the part of the screenwriter, or perhaps a convenience arising from lazy storytelling.
This film did not do well at the box office, I guess when you factor in the weirdness of it all, plus the fact that Gibson had gotten bad publicity for assault charges filed by his girlfriend, plus he'd gotten bad publicity a couple years before THAT for a drunk driving charge, and the racist and sexist rants that were recorded during his arrest - people stayed away from this film in droves. But this film might be worth a look, if only because it marked the start of Gibson's comeback, which was followed later by a role in "Daddy's Home 2" and directing "Hacksaw Ridge". And right now, there are a lot of people in Hollywood that got blacklisted by the #metoo movement, and you have to wonder if they're also going to try to come back into the movie industry after lying low for a decade and going through some kind of rehab or recovery programs.
Also starring Jodie Foster (last seen in "Carnage"), Anton Yelchin (last seen in "Alpha Dog"), Jennifer Lawrence (last seen in "Passengers"), Cherry Jones (last seen in "I Saw the Light"), Riley Thomas Stewart, Zachary Booth, Jeff Corbett, Michael Rivera, with cameos from Matt Lauer (last seen in "I, Tonya"), Jon Stewart (last seen in "Weiner"), Terry Gross.
RATING: 4 out of 10 post-it notes
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