The Voices (Marjane Satrapi, 2014)

It's quite remarkable how the star of Marjane Satrapi fell in the seven years between her captivating debut, the Iran-centred animation Persepolis, and this sorry mess. Satrapi's first foray into the English-language market, The Voices relies heavily on the boyish charm of Ryan Reynolds and his association with feelgood comedies, but casting him as a guileless schizophrenic who inadvertently turns into a serial killer, in the manner of Norman Bates, simply asks for too much indulgence. Initially, there's some promise in the device of his conversations with his pets, a psychopathic Scottish-voiced cat and a decent American-voiced dog, respectively goading him on to further excesses and trying to steer him in the right direction. But this is soon lost as women's heads begin to pile up in his fridge, and it stops being funny or pointful long before that. The dire musical end scene is almost worth watching just for condensing everything that's wrong with the tone of the film.

3/10