Director Marjane Satrapi has created a visually unique dark comedy about man imagines his cat (Mr. Whiskers) and dog (Bosco) are talking to him, he meets girl and falls for her before accidentally killing her, meets another girl to fall in love in, and then there is also a musical sequence with Jesus.  Ryan Reynolds manages to pull off the different facets of Jerry whether it is him or one of his voices.   Gemma Arterton is Fiona, the British lush that Jerry falls for at work, while Anna Kendrick is Lisa- the girl who has an instant crush on Jerry.  THE VOICES is one of the most unique and strangest movies in years.

 

Jerry works at Milton Fixture and Faucet (in the small American town of Milton) where he has still see his shrink and take his meds so he doesn’t hear voices (but he decided to stop taking his meds).   He meets Fiona while Lisa has a crush for him.  Fiona stands Jerry up for a date at a Chinese restaurant (for karaoke with the office girls) and it sets off a chain reaction of events where Jerry is questioning where he is good or bad as people start ending up dead at his hand.  THE VOICES presents Jerry’s world of f the meds as a very colorful fantasy while Jerry on meds is the dull reality that he hates.  The cast is fantastic in this very visual movie directed by Marjane Satrapi.  Ryan Reynolds steals the movie in his multiple roles as Jerry and the voices talking to Jerry while Anna Kendrick is a better counterpoint to Ryan than Gemma is.   THE VOICES is like a dramatic black comedy rollercoaster with its own share of twists, but Jerry’s actions does set a chain reaction of other actions which leads to the musical number with Jesus at the end.  

 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

THE VOICES: FROM FRIDGE TO FRAME- making-of featurette where you find out why everyone was attracted to the project, the surrealist nature of it, the many voices of Ryan Reynolds, and how they made the dog (Bosco) and the cat (Mr. Whiskers) talk.

VFX: THE MAKING OF BOSCO & MR. WHISKERS- a look at how they replaced the heads of the real animals with animated talking heads based on the voice performances of Ryan Reynolds

VFX: COMPARISON SHOWREEL shows many of the digital effects layers that went into several scenes

THE VOICES OF RYAN REYNOLDS- a behind-the-scenes look at Ryan Reynolds recording the different voices and perfecting the voice performances

 

12 minutes of (eight) deleted scenes which are very interesting to watch (even though they were trimmed for pacing and story reasons) and two extended scenes which aren’t as interesting to watch.

19 minutes of scenes animatics (and many of them are animated storyboard sketch animatics with temp voices.

CAST & COSTUME SKETCH GALLERY show notes on various characters and show costume sketches for them too

 

Previews for MORTDECAI, KILLER JOE, WILD CARD, and THE CAPTIVE

 

FINAL ANALYSIS: THE VOICES is a weird and entertaining dark comedy which proves that Ryan Reynolds is right to play Deadpool plus Marjane Satrapi puts her unique visual style to make this a very unique movie which has a great selection of extras on DVD.

 

This review is ©4-10-2015 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

Like Enterline Media on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/enterlinemediaweb and follow on tumblr at http://enterlinemedia.tumblr.com