The Voices is the story of Jerry (Ryan Reynolds) who hallucinates his entire world into a bright happy place, even so much as to have his dog and cat that talk to him.  The film shows someone who has a family history of mental illness and suffers from it himself, and give’s an insight into the mind of the mentally ill.  What I think this film really shows is what can lead mentally ill people to want to stop taking their medication and the trauma’s that lead them to want to escape reality and live in the hallucination.  Having dated a bipolar woman who didn’t want to take her medications I saw this film as an extreme yet fairly accurate of what the mentally ill see the world as, of course I’m only going on what my ex-girlfriend told me and what I was able to read in the books I read about mental illness and more specifically bipolar disorder.

Overall I’d say it was very well done, as I said I feel it’s a fairly accurate representation of mental illness.  But it’s also very well written to keep it from being dark for to long or goofy for to long, Just when your’re getting used to the light theme of the film it will get very dark, or vise versa, but it’s always done in a way to make a point and keep the story going, it’s not something that draws you out of the film.  And just when things start to get a little to serious and you start to think the film may be going down hill, they throw in some little bit of comedy, dark comedy but still comedy, to help the story along and keep your attention.  In the end it’s just a very well written script.

Ryan Reynolds is his usual great self (Green Lantern wasn’t his fault) and he was really able to show what his character was thinking and feeling while not over doing it.  He also does the voices of Bosco & Mr. Whiskers his dog and cat, originally a voice actor was going to be brought in to do their voices but Ryan Reynolds was able to convince the director that since his character hears the voices in his head he should do the voices himself, in the end it was a great move since the voice kind of sound like Ryan Reynolds but don’t at the same time, that’s just enough to really make you believe the story being told.  The rest of the cast is all unknown to me, but I will say that no one did anything I disliked, it’s just that they were all minor characters in a story about a man and his talking pets, the focus was never on the supporting cast long enough to saying anything in depth about their performances.

The music in this film was very well done, it either enhanced a bright and happy scene, or was just the perfect offset to a very dark scene that takes just enough of the edge off to keep you from getting to tense.  Very well done overall.

I think this film is far to good to not be seen at least once, maybe you won’t understand it and therefor won’t enjoy it, but if you can go into it understanding it’s a glimpse inside of mental illness you may just enjoy it and walk away with a new understanding of what others suffer with every day.  I’d say if you like dark comedy give it a try, if you just love Ryan Reynolds well he’s 90% of the film so you’ll get plenty of of you favorite man.

So watch this film, Mr. Whiskers commands you!