THE VOICES
The Voices
Here’s a brainteaser. If your dog and your cat started talking to you, whose advice should you take?
Jerry would be wise to ignore both animals and listen to his psychiatrist (Jacki Weaver), whose chief counsel is to take his anti-psychotic medication. But that would take the sting out of this darkly comic horror from Marjane Satrapi, whose animated, autobiographical Persepolis continues to be the most widely recognized of her four films.
Ryan Reynolds plays Jerry, a pleasant but troubled man who works in a bathtub factory whose corporate logo and uniforms are a uniform bright pink. New to the company, his charm and good looks make him an object of curiosity and desire for his colleagues, including exotic Fiona (Gemma Arterton), Lisa (Anna Kendrick) and Alison (Ella Smith).
And in spite of an awkwardness that borders on Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle, Jerry manages to successfully flirt with his colleagues. Trouble arises when he accidentally runs into a deer while driving one of the women home. The beast pleads with him to end its life. After finishing it off, he accidentally does an encore job on his co-worker.
Satrapi, working from a script by TV writer Michael R. Perry, brings a nice visual flair to the production. Jerry’s apartment, which is perched wonderfully if improbably over a bowling alley, sports a cheerful, mid-century decor even after he takes to storing body parts in little Tupperware containers there. But as soon as he pops a few pills, we see things as they really are; it’s not pretty.
Reynolds, who’s been having trouble finding his career balance since the Green Lantern fiasco of 2011, does a brave job in this one, somehow making Jerry a sympathetic figure; bloody but unbowed. He also provides the voices of Jerry’s pets, making his tabby cat purr like an evil Ewan McGregor, while Bosco the boxer sounds like a sleepy Matthew McConaughey.
The beasts have their own personalities as well, with the cat urging Jerry to keep on killing, while the dog recommends fetching the police; he also reminds Jerry that he is at heart a “good boy.”
The catch in The Voices is that the filmmakers haven’t gone as far as they might with the concept. Jerry’s the ultimate unreliable narrator, but the film holds back from plunging into complete Lynchian lunacy. The final song-and-dance number is nice, mind you, as is the notion of the severed head of a murder victim continuing cheery conversation with her dispatcher. But once it’s decided that anything might be unreal, there are so many more places the narrative might have gone. ΣΣ½
The Voices opens Feb. 13 in Toronto, and Feb. 20 on VOD.
The filmmakers haven’t gone as far as they might with the concept