PARK CITY — “The Voices” — “Persepolis” director Marjane Satrapi’s disastrous attempt to turn her success in animation into a career as a live-action director — illustrates the perils of not understanding what kind of film you are making. “Genre-bending” is the polite term employed by publicists, but a less politic word for the film is “mess.”
Frantic stylistic shifts between black-comic whimsy (chatty pets and equally voluble severed heads) and gruesome drama doom this curio, which stars Ryan Reynolds as Jerry, a bathtub-factory worker who at first seems merely a little slow but is gradually revealed to be deeply disturbed. The girls in the office (Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick) seem mildly dismissive but also harbor some affection for Jerry, and though the former stands him up for a date (Jerry’s idea of a good time is a Chinese restaurant where an Elvis impersonator does a floor show), after a few drinks she agrees to take a fateful ride with him.
Screenwriter Michael R. Perry is one of those unfortunate scribes who thinks one brilliant idea is enough to sustain a movie. The idea is this: Jerry talks to his pets, and they talk back. Mr. Whiskers, the cat, is a foul-mouthed psycho who, in a Scottish brogue, encourages Jerry to become a serial killer, while Bosco, the kind-hearted dog with a dopey Southern accent, tries to steer Jerry into being like him — a “good boy.”
It’s a great joke and the early going amounts to a hilarious SNL sketch, but then both Perry and Satrapi flounder for what to do next as the levity disappears for long stretches and sickeningly staged mayhem takes its place.
It wouldn’t be accurate to call the film a horror comedy because so many scenes are played less like terror-fantasy and more like “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.”
Meanwhile, the plot gets stuck in idle as we wait for the citizenry to get wise to Jerry’s string of slayings. Then, in the end, we return to silliness, with a Technicolor Disco Heaven scene.
Audiences who are enticed into seeing the film by what could be a very funny trailer are going to feel cheated by its abrupt turn from the frolicsome to the chilling.