Walter Black, a man suffering from the suburban angst that seems to afflict every family man in America, decides one fine day to give up totally on his life. He doesn’t quite commit suicide but from now on, he lives his life mediated through a beaver puppet he wears almost permanently on his right hand. To talk to him, you have to talk to the hand. And he’ll respond to you in character as the Beaver, who speaks in the Mockney Angela Lansbury made famous as Mrs Lovett in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.

As outlandish as it sounds (and some of you will be watching it for the added outlandishness of watching Mel Gibson act out his real life problems on screen), The Beaver is best seen as an allegory for acting, exploring in particular the bifurcation between an actor and his role, as well as the necessity of audiences to accept that an actor is separate from his role for the magic of storytelling to take place.

Will Walter’s lovely wife and sons accept him as the Beaver and not the damaged man walled up by his mid-life crisis? Can Walter the man ever be separate from his Beaver persona? As easily as how an audience can accept that the actor on stage is quite separate from his role in a 2-hour play? Will any of us ever look at Mel Gibson’s mad and angry characters separately from his real-life, scandal-ridden self? Jodie Foster explores all these issues and more in The Beaver, producing an American urban angst film out of a highly literate British kitchen sink domestic drama.

At the end of the day, the outlandishness of the film’s premise make it very difficult to buy into as a melodrama. The same outlandishness does mean that there is great comedy potential in this film; Steve Carrell and Jim Carrey were casting choices at different stages of production. Indeed, we do see Will Ferrell pulling this off. Sure, we’d lose the stunt casting of Mr Gibson, but Will Ferrell has a talent for pulling off dark existential comedy (see Stranger Than Fiction, Everything Must Go) that would have made The Beaver a far more palatable, darkly funny film instead of the melodrama it currently is.