The Voices

I wasn't expecting a great deal from this but was pleasantly surprised. I do like Ryan Reynolds and I think he played this perfectly, giving the slightly comedic element whilst still portraying someone suffering from extreme mental health problems. Showing us the difference between the medicated and unmedicated character was well done and although there were one or two points I would question, overall the balance was handled well. I liked that the character had a well thought out back story and his desire to be "normal" as well as the torture that he couldn't be really came across. I would give this one a go if you enjoy quirky films with a bit of an edge.

At first I was getting kinda bored but as the movie goes on it gets surprising deep especially for a movie with Ryan Reynolds in.

I'm assuming the lower ratings are people who just watched the movie without really thinking about it but when you look deeper into it, it's good.

I will admit it does have a very slow start but font turn it off because it does get far better when at first I expected a dumb Ryan Reynolds comedy. Ryan Reynolds is actually decent at doing the whole psychopath role which was unexpected. It is a movie where it even made the end credits contribute to the movies plot. So I was pleasantly surprised with this one.

Jerry (Ryan Reynolds) is a seemingly happy guy in the town of Milton. Dr. Warren (Jacki Weaver) is his court-appointed psychiatrist. He likes Fiona (Gemma Arterton) from work but she doesn't like him back. The problem is that he sees things and hear voices from animals. He's delusionally obsessed with Fiona but Lisa (Anna Kendrick) is the one who actually likes him.

Reynolds gets to play an odd guy. He has an opportunity to play a truly scary guy but he doesn't do that until the end. This is a lot of quirky black comedy but not actually funny. It could be a horror but it's not anything scary. If Reynolds plays him more quietly, he could be scarier and intensely creepy. The animals and the talking heads could also be weirder. It has some interesting quirkiness but it could be better. It has to choose to be either truly quirky like the closing credits or be an odd quirky scary horror.

Likable Jerry (Ryan Reynolds) stumbles innocently into the role of a killer, guided along the way by his evil talking cat and benevolent talking dog.

Reading other reviews, you will find words like "genre-bending" or "a mess", and indeed, the film is a bit uneven. The tone shifts a bit here and there, though it really is not all that bothersome and others seem to complain too loud.

Although Gemma Arterton has been great in the past, she just does not make the character of Fiona even remotely likable. She is supposed to be the love interest of Jerry, but there is just nothing about her that suggests chemistry. Anna Kendrick, on the other hand, is excellent, and it is great to see that she has been maintaining a high profile after "Up In The Air". She might have been the only actor to escape "Twilight" unscathed.

Reynolds should be praised for his range of voices (the cat sounds like Craig Ferguson and the dog sounds like Gary Busey). This could have been a weak point, but he instead elevates it to the next level. He also has the right personality to take a story that seems to combine the Son of Sam and "Master and Margarita" and make it fun.

If nothing else, there is a Chinese Elvis, and this may be the only movie able to claim that.

I must admit I loved parts of this movie and other parts I hated; which is not to say they were bad, I simply didn't like some parts because of the emotions they brought to the surface. The voices is a very dark comedy; there were parts which were completely laugh out loud funny (eg: many of mister whiskers' lines) and other parts were tragically serious.

I am not a Ryan Reynolds fan (at all) but this could have changed my mind completely, I didn't realise that he had done the voices until I read about it here. Jackie Weaver was outstanding as the psychiatrist American accent and all.

What I found outstanding about this movie is that it has very few of the dumbed-down, pathetic and predictable traits of the trite drivel Hollywood peddle as "comedy". There was no comparison really.

I recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys a thought-provoking, less than predictable adult-oriented movie (ie: people who aren't offended by adult concepts and the f-word).