Stand By Me Reinforces Something Understood In Hollywood For Decades: Nostalgia Sells

Stand By Me reinforces something that has been understood in Hollywood for decades: nostalgia sells. With this film, it's "planned nostalgia," meaning that the production was designed from the beginning to encourage older audience members to look back at their youth through rose-tinted glasses. Many movies develop a strong sense of nostalgia with the passage of the years, but Stand By Me had it from the beginning, peering through the veil of time separating the '80s (when it was produced and in which the bookend segments are set) from the '50s. The narrative is driven by the same sense of fondness for bygone years that has categorized the likes of A Christmas Storyand the TV series The Wonder Years, both of which feature adult narrators recalling key moments from their early years.

One of the most notable aspects of the character roster is the almost complete absence of females. While this is not uncommon in certain genres typically centered on male characters (war movies, for example), it is unusual for coming-of-age films, which almost always deal with sex in one form or another. However, by placing the protagonists at the age of 12, Stand By Me is able to insulate them from involvement with the opposite sex. During the era in which the film is set, children weren't as sexually precocious and adventuresome as they are today and, while there was certainly plenty of curiosity at age 12, co-ed friendships were more the exception than the norm. The obvious added benefit of keeping the cast male is that it allows the story to focus on the pre-teen aspects of male bonding. By limiting any sexual component, Stand By Me retains a certain air of innocence and charm.

For the leads, the filmmakers selected four of the most promising young actors on the horizon of American cinema. At the time, Wil Wheaton had only a small list of credits on his resume (mostly small parts and TV appearances), and Stand By Mewould represent his breakthrough part. As was true for the slightly better-known River Phoenix, Wheaton's exceptional, unforced work in the film would open Hollywood to him. Within a year after Stand By Me's release, Wheaton was cast as the much-maligned Wesley Crusher in the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation(although a lion's share of the derision heaped upon that character was the fault of poor writing, not of Wheaton's ability to inhabit the character). Phoenix appeared on the road to superstardom until his untimely 1993 death cut short his career. The movie's other two leads would have successful but more low-key careers. Corey Feldman, already recognizable at the time of Stand By Me's release as a result of parts in Gremlins and Goonies, worked frequently (mostly in low prestige productions) but battled drug addiction for many of his teenage and early adult years. Jerry O'Connell, who made his feature debut in Stand By Me, went on to work primarily in TV with occasional forays into low-profile films.

The tale itself, adapted from a Stephen King story, dwells on the mates' quest to find the body of a schoolboy supposedly struck down by a train while walking in the woods. They set off hoping to find fame, but then start to reveal their own personal secrets and the journey becomes as emotional as it is physical.

It's hard to tell if the four young actors are all geniuses or just perfectly cast, but the performances are never short of real, and if some of the key scenes don't have you choking back tears, you are without a soul.

The movie accurately depicts the painful process of maturation that has plagued both teens and preteens for ages. In many ways, the conclusion of the quest signifies the end of innocence (or at least childhood) for the principles, as the four boys are never quite the same after making their gruesome discovery.

The film's brilliance ultimately lies in its all-embracing adherence to the immutable rules of reality.Stand by Me goes to considerable lengths to identify the issues and accurately portray the pressures that lead to the disenchantment of teens everywhere. The boys' unyielding sense of camaraderie and irrepressible spirit of youth sees them through towering adversity that is ultimately admired, and at the same time abhorred.

Although there is an absence of Christian themes it takes nothing away from the entertainment value of the film. In short, it is a film about friends and how we should cherish them. The film is full of moving performances by talented young actors and a really great score and soundtrack. I would suggest the film for any adult who is nostalgic for childhood memories and enjoys a tender look at growing up. If one wants to view the film in the presence of younger viewers, I would suggest presenting a taped copy off television, where it is heavily edited and doesn’t really damage the movie’s effectiveness. “Stand By Me” is an unforgettable film and I recommend it, sincerely!

Reign Of Assassins Is Not Following The Norms Of The Wuxia Genre

REIGN OF ASSASSINS opens with an animated prologue telling the story of enlightened monk Bodhi, whose unmatched accomplishments in both Buddhist prayer and martial arts have ensured whoever now possesses his remains will become all-powerful. A gang of assassins, The Dark Stone, learns that a local official is in possession of half of Bodhi's remains and proceeds to massacre his entire family, only for Drizzle (Kelly Lin), the gang's deadliest member, to escape with the body.

Compelled to finally lay the remains to rest, Drizzle goes into hiding, has her appearance changed by a surgeon and resurfaces in Nanjing as the unassuming Jing (Michelle Yeoh). There she falls in love with local courier Ah-Sheng (Korean actor Jung Woo Sung), and plans to build a normal life. The Dark Stone is in hot pursuit however, and when Jing is caught up in a bank robbery and forced to use her signature water shedding sword technique, her location is exposed and Dark Stone leader Wheel King (Wang Xueqi), together with Lei Bin (Shawn Yue), The Magician (Leon Dai) and newly recruited Turquoise (Barbie Hsu) descend on Nanjing, determined to kill Drizzle and retrieve Bodhi's remains.


Set in ancient China, Zeng Jing (Michelle Yeoh) is a skilled assassin who finds herself in possession of a mystical Buddhist monk's remains. She begins a quest to return the remains to its rightful resting place, and thus places herself in mortal danger because a team of assassins, The Dark Stone, is in a deadly pursuit to possess the remains which holds an ancient power-wielding secret.

There are several elements in the film that are not following the norms of the wuxia genre, or rather breaking its barriers possibly in mind of reinvention to inspire and excite. Instead of vying for divine martial art manuals and exquisite weaponry, the pilgrims are brawling with one another over two halves of a deceased kungfu monk's corpse in hope of reigning as the top martial arts master who is second to none.

Leading the campaign is The Dark Stone, a powerful sect that features an alliance of Lei Bin (Shawn Yue), Lian Sheng (Leon Dai), Xi Yu (Kelly Lin), and Cao Feng (Wang Xue Qi) the leader of the pact. When Xi Yu went rogue and disappeared with one half of the remains, the rest came hunting down her trails with the help of a new replacement Zhan Qing (Barbie Hsu).

Among other things, the picture works well as a playful domestic comedy as it observes Drizzle and Jiang adapt to married life; the notion of a skilled warrior trying to protect her unsuspecting, slightly dopey husband is played with a tenderness that yields unexpected emotional dividends at the film's bloody finale. Pic reps a fine showcase for Yeoh (too little employed in this sort of high-flying action vehicle since 2000's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), whose Zen-like elegance renders her command of swordsmanship and hand-to-hand combat all the more impressive. Jung, who played "The Good" in "The Good the Bad the Weird," has an endearing, affable presence, and is eventually granted an opportunity to display his own action prowess. Barbie Hsu and Shawn Yue effectively round out the DSA squad.

As directed by Stephen Tung, the action is seldom as cleanly choreographed as one would like, often rendered a kinetic blur by Cheung Ka-fai's editing; still, the style suits Su and Woo's giddy, unpretentious tone. Production design and costumes are evocative but not too lavish, and Horace Wong's widescreen lensing proves as nimble as the characters.

The Special Effects Make The Mummy Memorable And Enjoyable

The Mummy is a remake of the 1932 motion picture of the same name. Admittedly, I have not seen the original film, and doubt I will be able to. I haven't been able to find a copy of it anywhere in my city. The only thing I can imagine is that the 1932 version is infinitely superior in every way, from acting right down to special effects. Yes, even the special effects. The film begins in 1719 B.C., when Egyptians ruled their land with the kind of authority Bill Clinton only wishes he could attain. Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) is the High Priest of Osiris, and the righthand man of Pharaoh. Unfortunately, Imhotep is also in love with Pharaoh's mistress, the hauntingly beautiful Anck-su-namun (Patricia Velasquez). This forbidden love leads to Pharaoh's death, and the subsequent execution of Anck-su-namun. Imhotep is caught and becomes the first and only man to ever suffer what many archaeologists believe to be the worst curse ever performed. His body is wrapped in bandages, his tongue is cut off, and he is buried alive to be eaten by Scarab beetles. He is to remain there until someone reads from the Book of the Dead. And being a film about a mummy, we know someone will.

That someone is Evelyn Carnarvon (Rachel Weisz), a librarian hoping to one day become a full-fledged archaeologist. The year is 1923. Over three thousand years have passed since the mummification of Imhotep, and Evelyn has desperately been searching the whereabouts of the rumored Book of Amun Ra. She has yet to find it. One fateful day, her more successful (but obviously more demented) brother Jonathan (John Hannah) brings her an artifact he stole from a prisoner in an Egyptian jail. This artifact contains a map to the lost city Hamunaptra, which is rumored to contain all the riches and wealth of the Egyptians. She travels to visit this prisoner, who claims to have actually found Hamunaptra. His name is Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser), an archaeologist who lost his entire team after finding the mythical city. Eve begs for his release, and finally gets it when she offers the warden twenty-five percent of the findings.

Rounding out the cast is the brother-sister tandem of Jonathan and Evelyn (Josh Hannah and Rachel Weisz, respectively), and Beni (Jonathan Hyde) as the cowardly, sadistic sidekick. Each of these three characters is just as enjoyable as The Mummy and Rick O’Connell. Indeed, they all bring a welcome variety to the cast, providing appropriate measures of humor and conflict at just the right times. But of course, rising to the fore is Evelyn, who becomes the love interest for O’Connell. Her character isn’t the typical damsel in distress so often seen in these kinds of films. She’s more like Marion Ravenwood (Raiders of the Lost Ark) than Willie Scott (The Temple of Doom). In fact, it’s possible to consider her character as prominently as the Mummy or O’Connell.

As for the story, it’s wonderfully paced, hitting all the right beats – beginning with a well-scripted prologue and moving through action sequences, exposition, and montages at just the right times to keep viewers engaged all the way through the film. Of course, stories about mummies are almost always compelling, so long as they are told properly. But The Mummy does indeed tell a proper story, adding in the right mixture of realism and fantasy to create a plausible narrative. It tells the tale of a group of treasure hunters who inadvertently awaken a thousands of years old monster and have to find some way to undo their handiwork before the world is destroyed.

Part of what makes the film so particularly memorable and enjoyable are its special effects. At the time, The Mummy was fairly cutting edge in its use of CGI to render the Mummy, the sandstorms, scarabs and all manner of plagues including the meteor shower. What’s most impressive about the movie is that, nearly a decade later, the film still looks good. This proves that the CGI was integrated in such a way as to enhance the film. Otherwise, cutting edge 1999 would look downright embarrassing by the time 2009 rolled around. The Mummy not only avoids that pitfall, it manages to create a look and style that perfectly complements its story.

Sommers' very own tailor made script shows that people should not buy books on 'How to Write your Screenplay in 21 Days' or 'How to Make a Movie that Sells' on a matter of principle. Sommers tries and fails at juggling Adventure, Romance, Comedy, Action, and Horror around all at once. In the desperate attempt to keep the balls from hitting him on the head, he ends up placing one-liners right next to screams of terror as a flesh-eating... BEETLE?... devours someone from the inside. Also we get to see Rachel Weisz go from sub-zero to just plain zero as she 'warms up' to Brendan Fraser.

This is a film at which I took my own advice. My advice: always get a head start on an angry mob. Hence, I watched the last thirty seconds from the back of the theatre.

As promised by the preview for The Mummy, the special effects are good. They are not, however, anything compared to what we normally see in the pre-summer gameshow. And, when I say special effects are good, you know what that normally means... It did also live up to its tagline, but not in the way intended. Let me tell you, personally, BEWARE OF THE MUMMY.

Sleepy Hollow, A Dark Fairy Tale Powered By The Pervasive Millennial Angst Of The Era

So when it comes to appearances, this dark, shivery "Sleepy Hollow" manages to be as distinctively Burtonesque as ''Edward Scissorhands'' or ''Batman.'' Offering a serenely unrecognizable take on Washington Irving's story and its famously unlucky schoolteacher, the film brings its huge reserves of creativity to bear upon matters like the severing of heads. Quaint Dutch burghers of the Hudson Valley could have bowled ninepins throughout Rip Van Winkle's sleep-in with the supply of decapitated heads sent flying here, even if Mr. Burton handles such sequences with his own brand of wit. Shot 1: Sword approaches victim. Shot 2: Blood splashes Ichabod's glasses. Shot 3: Head rolls away. Shot 4: Body pitches forward. Pause for laugh.

History will recognize the rich imagination and secret tenderness of Mr. Burton's best films. (From a purely technical standpoint, as in the award-ready cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki, this grimly voluptuous "Sleepy Hollow" must be one of them.) But it will also raise the question of what we were smoking during this period of infatuation with grisliness on screen. It is not unreasonable to admire Mr. Burton immensely without wanting to peer at the exposed brain stems of his characters, but ''Sleepy Hollow'' leaves no choice. As written by Andrew Kevin Walker, who took off Gwyneth Paltrow's head in ''Seven'' and apparently considered that small potatoes, ''Sleepy Hollow'' turns the tale of the Headless Horseman into the pre-tabloid story of a rampaging serial killer.

SLEEPY HOLLOW is less the Washington Irving story than it is Scream set in post-revolutionary times. The themes of science vs. supernatural and appearance vs. reality appear throughout the movie, as Crane must understand his own past in order to see the truth. He describes himself as "imprisoned by a chain of reasoning." He keeps coming back to a toy given to him by his mother, a spinning disk with a bird on one side and a cage on the other. As it spins, the bird appears to be inside the cage, an optical illusion, and, not by coincidence, the very illusion (persistence of vision) that makes viewers think that the people in the thousands of still pictures that make up a movie are really moving.

Depp plays Crane with the right haunted look and rigid posture. But the ludicrousness of some of the plot turns and the exaggerated fright reactions leave him with the most outrageous eye-rolling since Harvey Korman's imitation of a silent film star. Indeed, the movie frequently brings to mind those sublime "Carol Burnett Show" movie parodies, especially when the villain ultimately finds time for a detailed confession as the planned final victim is waiting for the Headless Horseman to arrive. The wonderful Christina Ricci is wasted in an ingenue part.

Depp nearly reprises his role as Edward Scissorhands as a quiet wallflower (sans scissors), and whiter-than-white Christina Ricci (as the magic-obsessed love interest) sticks out among the drab fogies in their powdered wigs like Bill Gates at the Playboy Mansion. The supporting cast is uniformly bland, just like the scenery (though the latter is intentional). The sole exception is Walken, who plays the horseman (when he has his head, at least) with typical aplomb.

So what's the sum of the parts? What should have been a Halloween treat is instead a late-November humdrum flick worthy of a glance but little more. The story is obtuse yet unsurprising. The humor is sparse and occasionally funny. And while Burton's signature is all over the film, his typical wit is not.

How will the film fare at the box office? I can't rightly say, but I do know that a legion of junior high students is going to be disappointed, missing a whole lot of questions on their English Lit exams because of this movie.

One of the key shifts from the historical frame of Irving's earlier narrative to the contemporary setting of the film's production is the emphasis on visual perception. Sleepy Hollow shows the relativity of perception, and how the interpretive element of perception impacts matters of truth (Nietzsche is one key figure who stands between the original story and the current film). The half-blind Notary Hardenbrook exclaims at the beginning, "seeing is believing," and Crane himself distrusts the "magic" behind the supposed headless horseman until he sees it for himself and then goes into a brief crisis of faith (in science). When he recovers he takes a somewhat different tact in his solving of the crime. Before "seeing" the non-rational actions of the undead Horseman, Crane is depicted utilizing various optical lenses—absurd contraptions that seem to be borrowed from Terry Gilliam's films. After this crisis Crane no longer utilizes his instruments, though he does keep his head about him, reasoning through the crimes, relying on a sort of "inner vision."

Another important development in the interim between Irving's story and the current film is, of course, psychoanalysis and its artistic prodigy, surrealism. Burton's films are constantly shifting between dream life and lived life—although with his films' consistent dark exposures, it is difficult to tell the difference—and the exquisite scenes here seem like dreamscapes, often borrowing from the ethereal, Romantic, Hudson River School paintings of Cole and Bierstadt. The internal, dark shades that pervade the first Batman films, or the Nightmare Before Christmas, are present here as various unconscious connections are made visible—a traditional mode of surrealism.

The film is also crippled by a terribly contrived romantic subplot involving a miscast Christina Ricci (it pains me to say that), who looks perfectly period but can't manage to wrap her mouth around the movie's formal dialogue or its highly mannered acting style. She falls for Ichabod, much to the chagrin of her beau, played by Casper Van Dien ("Starship Troopers") -- doing his very best Billy Zane-in-"Titanic" imitation. Thankfully, he gets waxed by the Horseman after only three lines of dialogue.

Other players include Miranda Richardson as Ricci's more-than-meets-the-eye stepmother and a razor-toothed, wild-eyed Christopher Walken, who plays the Hors
On the production end of things, "Sleepy Hollow" is a fabulous, high-tech homage to the moody, old-fashioned horror flicks of the 1930s, bent to fit the Burton mold. The pale, moon-lit tones generated by a perma-dusk sky; rich but somber costumes (bad teeth, even!); craggy, foggy, sound stage forests of imposing, twisted, leafless trees -- it's all quite absorbing.

As I wrote in Horror Films of the 1990s, Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow opens with a droll visual joke that, in some fashion, very ably exemplifies the film's nature. Perhaps this joke is one that only the longtime horror movie enthusiast will fully understand. As the film commences, what appears to be very fake-looking red blood drips down upon a parchment. This fluid is soon revealed instead to be hot wax, used merely to seal an important letter. Yet for a fleeting -- and wonderful -- moment, the horror audience may believe it has actually returned to the wonderful and bygone world of Hammer Studios since the hot wax resembles that trademark Hammer-styled “fake” blood.

The joke is not only an example of inside baseball, so-to-speak, but an indicator that Burton has fashioned his entire 1999 film as an homage to the output of Hammer. As Michael Atkinson and Laurel Shifrin write in Flickipedia, the director “continues his unique, idiosyncratic, and very personal career project: to re-experience and revivify the toy chest of pop-culture effluvia that sustained him – and many of us – through our ‘Nam era childhoods.” (Chicago Review Press, 2007, page 21.)

Or, as Wesley Morris wrote in The San Francisco Examiner: "what Burton does perhaps better than even Steven Spielberg: transport you to a nook in your childhood, be it around a summer campfire or smack in front of a TV set on a Saturday afternoon."

In the visual language of a Hammer Studios film then, the impressive Sleepy Hollow asks its audience to contemplate the nature of life on Heaven and Earth. Is science the key to understanding it? Or is there room, yet, for magic in this world? In scenes both lyrical and poetic (particularly those involving Lisa Marie as Ichabod's mother), Burton's Sleepy Hollow seeks the answer.

The Avengers - It’s Total Delight To Just Sit Back And Enjoy The Fireworks

The dreams of comic book and superhero fanboys around the world finally come true with the arrival of Marvel team up “The Avengers”, or “Avengers Assemble” as it’s been released in some countries. Having gone through several years of development hell, anticipation peaked when it was announced that geek favourite Joss Whedon would be directing, pulling together the heavy hitting all star returning cast of Robert Downey, Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Chris Evans as Captain America, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, with Mark Ruffalo stepping in as the latest screen incarnation of the Hulk.

The plot sees Tom Hiddleston again as the villainous Asgardian Loki, who during his exile after being beaten by Thor has joined with the would-be galaxy devouring alien race the Chitauri, being promised an army to conquer the earth in return for recovering all-powerful energy source the Tesseract. Loki appears in the SHIELD facility where the cube is being held, snatches it and enslaves scientist Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) and Hawkeye with his sinister glow-stick staff before vanishing. Knowing that war is surely coming, Nick Fury assembles The Avengers, a disparate band of superheroes, hoping that they will be able to overcome their various differences and personality defects and combine their talents to save the world.

The Avengers is a result of the biggest buildup in cinema history, with the quartet of Iron Man and its sequel, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger made to pave the way for an epic boss fight, and it delivers in thoroughly awesome ways. Nearly every minute of The Avengers throbs with heart-pounding fun, from the big opening apocalyptic scene at the S.H.I.E.L.D base to the gargantuan effects-soaked final battle.

Director Whedon combines extremely clever lines, bombastic CGI with unexpected character development, and elevates the overused superhero genre to something much more substantial. He completely resists the temptation to make a dark brooding drama, and in taking a more gregarious direction, the film becomes infinitely more refreshing.

Firstly, you are unlikely to find a more likable ensemble of characters in any film anywhere. Not only do you get to witness the spectacle of Iron Man and Captain America fight alongside each other, and The Hulk and Thor smashing people together, but you’re also greeted with terrific witty back and forth banter between them all. It’s clear that Whedon is crazy about comic books and he balances the large and iconic cast of characters with the passionate dexterity of a 14-year-old genius surgeon.

The plot is naturally an excuse to get the big guys together. Baddie Asgardian Loki (Tom Hiddleston) arrives on earth to rule humans and has an alien army to enforce his regime. To deal with the threat, S.H.I.E.L.D director Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) assembles the motley group of Avengers to kick copious amounts of alien buttock and defend the planet. But putting all these guys in a single room doesn’t go too smoothly initially — they bicker hilariously and bombard each other with scathing one-liners.

While Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is super serious and methodical, Tony Stark (Downey Jr) is amusingly narcissistic, Thor (Hemsworth) is a vengeful foreigner, Black Widow (Johansson) is menthol cool and sexy as hell, and unlike in her previous appearance, she is smart and suave. There’s an interesting twist to Hawkeye’s (Renner) character, but Mark Ruffalo brings a wonderful new shade to Bruce Banner and really steals the show as the Hulk.

The special effects are colossal and eye popping, and there are plenty of bigger than life moments. In fact the whole second half is one ambitious action scene grander than all the other Marvel films put together.
Hiddleston makes a very interesting villain, and a scene involving him and the Hulk towards the end will leave your face with the widest possible grin. Samuel L Jackson is his usual pulpy self and Whedon goes one step further and gives Agent Coulson (Cobie Smulders) a meatier role.

The Avengers took almost 50 years to appear on screen together, and the wait has indeed been worthwhile. It’s one of the most entertaining films ever made - it’s total delight to just sit back and enjoy the fireworks.

"The Beaver" Is A Unique And Thoughtful Project That Showcases A Charming

The Beaver, much like the film’s protagonist, has been hiding from the ugly realities of life for the last six months – after a seemingly never-ending font of bad press for star Mel Gibson.
A lot of early industry murmurs focused on the parallels between the actor and his equally self-destructive character in the film. The comparisons are certainly interesting but, without the controversy, can The Beaver stand on its own two feet as one of the better indie offerings in a summer chock-full of high profile superhero films?

Fortunately, the answer is yes. While it’s certainly hard to fully ignore some of the more on-the-nose moments of actor/character crossover (specifically a disheveled-looking Gibson pouring Vodka on a television screen), The Beaver still manages to direct the audience away from the controversy and to the story at hand – that of clinically depressed Walter Black, family man and CEO of a flailing toy company, who spends the majority of his days asleep, on medications, or sleeping because of all the medications.

It’s at Walter’s lowest moment that the titular beaver puppet comes into the picture. The Beaver allows Walter to take back his life by speaking for him (in a British accent) and offering a safe distance between the ups and downs of everyday living: his failing company, estranged wife and resentful teenager – as well as his youngest son, who is routinely overlooked. However, even as Walter finds new life and success hiding behind The Beaver, it isn’t long before he realizes that while he may be up walking around, the Walter he wants to be still needs to wake-up.

On paper, a story like The Beaver could be laughable (we won’t even get into the title) but coupled with some thoughtful and compelling direction from Jodie Foster, Gibson delivers an especially charming and believable performance. Some of more traditionally challenging scenes, where an actor has to engage in a back and forth with an inanimate object, are surprisingly successful – with subtle adjustments to his expression, Gibson breathes life into both The Beaver as well as the heartbreakingly empty and submissive Walter.

Similarly, Gibson and Foster (through the actor’s performance and the director’s composition) give The Beaver an actual physical presence – without it coming across as a gimmick. The puppet doesn’t just make things awkward for the characters, it genuinely helps to draw-out subtle emotions in the supporting cast as well as add an exclamation point to already complicated (or humorous) situations.

Foster, who has been somewhat off the grid the last five years, works double-duty on the film as Walter’s wife Meredith and delivers a great counter-point to Gibson’s closed-off and non-adversarial character. Similarly, the film spends a significant amount of time following the story of Walter’s older son, Porter (Star Trek’s Anton Yelchin) as he attempts to purge himself of any resemblance to his father before he heads-off to college at Brown University.

The film does a good job of providing a reason for the time dedicated to Porter’s story – and the side-narrative also gives the audience a well-deserved break from the main plot as well as brings in characters we wouldn’t otherwise get a chance to see, specifically Norah (played by Jennifer Lawrence). Despite the fact that Norah isn’t directly affected by Walter’s shenanigans, she helps mirror his inner struggle – as she wrestles with her own inability to face the challenges of life. To their credit, both Lawrence and Yelchin offer-up great performances and manage to keep their senior-year storyline from falling into the same campy geek guy/popular girl conventions of a lot of films.

The performances and execution in The Beaver are on-point; however, the film is not without a few shortcomings. In general, the movie successfully chronicles Walter’s journey of self-acceptance and discovery, but at times gets bogged down in some over-the-top story beats that come across “cartoony” and could remind audiences of the overly-absurd set-up – the same one the actors have worked so hard to keep grounded and real.

The Beaver is at its best when it stays grounded, because the characters (and subsequently the performances) are deep and interesting – but once in awhile the filmmakers must have felt as though audiences needed more. An example: when one of Walter’s toy creations becomes a smash hit, it isn’t enough to just see the sold-out store shelves – The Beaver himself has to become a cultural icon for audiences to get that the puppet can’t actually bring about a true recovery.

Similarly, while the film succeeds in earning its emotional climax, The Beaver doesn’t exactly handle Walter’s descent into madness as carefully (or convincingly) as it needs to in order for the dramatic climax to be equally successful. Instead, while the final act of the film is certainly compelling from moment to moment, it’s not as carefully crafted as what came before, ultimately rocketing the main plot forward while leaving some story threads unresolved.

A few slips in the build-up of the overarching narrative  still can’t undercut the captivating performances, engaging characters, and great thematic material explored in the film. The Beaver is a unique and thoughtful project that showcases a charming, as well as unconventional, character journey. And, despite how you feel about the man, it’s also one of Gibson’s best roles to date.