Sorry, Mel.
“The Beaver” is not going to rehabilitate you.
It’s a bummer of a movie -- dark and at cross-purposes with both itself and any image do-over you might be seeking.
In many ways, a movie star’s public persona an acting job – just as much as the roles he or she plays on screen. But in an era of TMZ and citizen paparazzi, it has become ever more difficult to maintain any kind of false façade.
For the decades Gibson was riding high, he had a reputation as an Australian archetype -- the “larrikin.” It’s a word used Down Under to describe -- usually with fond frustration -- a boisterous young man prone to mischief.
We all have watched Gibson’s behavior go from maverick to maniac. There was nothing likable about his DUI arrest, anti-Semitic rant or addressing a female police officer as “Sugar Tits” back in 2006. Those indiscretions paled, though, next to the allegations last year that he had beat up and threatened with a gun his then girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of his infant daughter.
When audio recordings of him screaming in rage at her, using shockingly racist and misogynistic language, surfaced last summer, it seemed his as a movie star was kaput and beyond salvaging, no matter how many contrite interviews he might be willing to give.
Ironically, at the time, he had already completed filming on “The Beaver,” a movie about a middle-aged man in the throes of a breakdown.
Awkward.
The movie’s opening was pushed back until now with the hope that there would be enough other, more recent celebrity flameouts -- Charlie Sheen going ballistic, Chris Brown trashing his dressing room at “Good Morning America,” Lindsey Lohan pouting in court yet again, etc. -- that Mel’s misdeeds would have become a distant memory.
Not a chance that’s gonna happen. Nope. Not even with Wednesday’s news that Oksana has dropped her domestic-violence charges.
“The Beaver” first came to notice when writer Kyle Killen’s screenplay topped the 2008’s infamous Black List of Hollywood’s best unproduced scripts. Jodie Foster signed on as director and star and cast Gibson -- with whom she had been friendly since they co-starred in 1964’s “Maverick” -- in the leading role.
A seemingly comic drama, “Beaver” tells the story of a middle-aged toy company executive who, deep in the throes of depression, discovers that the only way he can communicate is by ranting via a hand puppet -- a beaver, perched on his left arm. This furry alter-ego oozes brash self-confidence and speaks in a voice and accent that sound alarmingly like Michael Caine’s.
The problem is that “Beaver” is really three movies in one, all at odds with each other.
The first is an angry, absurdist take on a middle-aged guy letting it all hang out, with his puppet turning into a cross between Svengali and Chucky.
