Blu-ray Review: The Beaver  Clinical depression isn’t exactly
the stuff of Hollywood dreams. And in 2011, neither is Mel
Gibson. His real-life drunken tirades have cost him dearly — and
they make him an unlikely candidate for the necessarily
sympathetic movie role of a severely depressed man who takes to
talking through a beaver hand-puppet just to survive.  Still,
director Jodie Foster likes a big challenge, and she found one
in The Beaver. It’s hard to imagine such essentially edgy
material succeeding completely in a mainstream movie like this;
a low-budget film with unknown actors probably would’ve had a
much better shot. Inevitably, that disconnect plays out in the
form of wild mood-swings as the movie bounces back and forth
between tragedy and light comedy without ever really finding its
footing.  Surprisingly, it’s none other than Gibson himself who
saves the day. His spot-on personification of the Cockney-voiced
Beaver never wavers, even as he plays dual roles in a number of
fast-paced scenes. Foster i