The Beaver — review

Can we watch this film without a whole carousel of Gibson baggage? Mel plays a man who has a breakdown and starts communicating with his family and workmates via a tatty Beaver glove puppet doing a Ray Winstone impression. It's no surprise to me that people actually prefer talking to the puppet than to Mel Gibson, yet this doesn't make the film any more bearable. Directed by Jodie Foster, it is the very essence of a misfire, a film so out of step with the times that I'm tempted to say Dick Cheney on a hunting trip couldn't have misfired more. The last 30 minutes slop by in a soup of such bad directing that Foster's career flashed through my consciousness in a swarm of images, like Topol in Flash Gordon , and, clutching my temples, I staggered up the aisle crying, "Oh, Jodie, Jodie, no!"