Beezel: A Dark Comedy with a Devilish Heart and a Human Soul
When Beezel — the animated short from the Movie 43 anthology — first emerged, it surprised viewers with its combination of outrageous humor, discomforting subject matter, and the strange fusion of innocence and grotesque fantasy. Directed by James Gunn, long before he earned a reputation as Hollywood’s rogue with Guardians of the Galaxy, this short segment was, and still is, one of the most controversial and misunderstood pieces of the entire film. At first impression, Beezel is a story about a jealous cat and its demonic kitten. On closer inspection, the raunchy animation reveals a deeply poignant rreflection on obsession, loneliness, and the fine line between love and possession. These themes resonate deeply with the Indian emotional landscape as well.
When Animation Turned Sinister
Beezel depicts the story of a woman named Anabel (played by Elizabeth Banks) who is in a relationship with a man named Steven (James Marsden). Anabel’s life seems idyllic until she meets Beezel, the cat who is inexplicably possessive of her new boyfriend. What starts out as a humorous portrayal of a jealous pet, quickly descends into a horror comed.In the end, chaos reigns—cartoonish violence, awkward sexual moments, and emotional bombshells surrounding unhealthy attachment. Gunn shifts the ordinary, a domestic setting, into an allegory of obsessive love—an obsessive love that is a hoot from a distance but a horror when lived. In India, where love, more possessive, and “filmy love” is the norm, glorified by the filmy industry, Beezel would stand as a surreal testament of warped affection that can be monstrous.
The Cast Behind the Madness
Beezel was a huge risk for Elizabeth Banks, most recognized for her diverse roles in comedies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and drama series The Hunger Games. The short required her to portray opposite a green-screen character who would later be an animated blue cat. It was strange, extreme, and something that many would find difficult to manage, but Banks incorporated a performance that was extreme and grounded to portray the animated cat. Banks is a grounded actress, and a testament to that would be her performance in Beezel.
Hidden within the humor were some odd, raw truths. Banks, who has worked extensively in Hollywood and spoken about the challenges of the industry, personally connected to the story — about jealousy, relationships, and the difficulty of establishing boundaries. “It’s wild, yes, but it’s also about how love can sometimes go too far,” she said in an interview years later. Her ability to find the humanity within the chaos is what gave Beezel its emotional depth.
Unlike his usual leading roles, Marsden got the chance to break his mold and play against type in Beezel. Embodying Steven, the man who is completely oblivious to the brewing storm between his girlfriend and her cat, he leaned into the role’s ironic humor. Hollywood has always hedged his bets, alternating between roles that place him at the center in the romantic spotlight and self-deprecating comedy. Beezel is a testament to his evolution from “the pretty face” to an actor who is willing to embrace the comedy and laugh at himself.
James Gunn Before the Fame
In retrospect, Beezel’s unique qualities and appeal can be attributed to its creator, James Gunn, who was still trying to move beyond the cult-movie status. Before the Marvel and DC franchises, Gunn was focused on the perverse and grotesque aspects of human nature and trying to humor and anthropomorphize them. The Beezel short already exhibits the essence of Gunn’s hallmark style: combining dark humor with empathy, working with emotional shock, and depicting how even the most grotesque and villainous characters can be de-monsterized.
In addition to combining live-action with animated sequences, Beezel was the first James Gunn production to feature odd creatures. Although Beezel was designed to shock, the production sought to create an atmosphere that would cause the audience to squirm with discomfort and madness. This was the opposite of the emotional catharsis sought by viewers of the later Guardians of the Galaxy series.
Gunn’s creative team experienced unique challenges in working with contrasting elements. The animators transformed Beezel’s cat into an adorable and hand-drawn vintage Warner Bros cartoon, while trying to exhibit the soft-terrifying combination that Beezel sought to represent. This combination of softness and terror was fundamental to the film and its visual identity.
What Audiences Saw (and What They Missed)
Movie 43 angered almost all audiences in 2013. An outrageous anthology of shock-comedy skits directed by different directors and featuring different actors was 43 touted as ‘one of the worst movies ever made’, by audiences. As the years passed, however, some segments, especially Beezel, gained notoriety among cinephiles for 43 as a grotesque commentary on modern relationships.
Fans returning to the film on online streaming platforms and social media pages commented about redefining relationships hidden within 43. To some household Bezel’s fixation was emblematic of the absence of boundaries in toxic relationships, a phenomenon present, and sometime praised, in many Indian households. Others applauded the film for satirizing the dysfunctional relationships behind the pet/owner bond and the emotional puppeteering seen in the hierarchy of household relationships.
There was little online community on Reddit or blogs that studied the film’s symbols of the blue fur as sadness, the cartoon world as describing suppressed emotions, and the violence within slapstick as the release of emotional conflict. Bezel was a trashy film that provoked surprising discussions.
The Indian Lens: Love, Control, and the Madness of Possession
The emotional undercurrent of Beezel feels almost “desi”. Love becoming suffocating, and even toxic, is a sentiment prevalent in Indian storytelling — from mythology, such as in the case of Devdas, to contemporary cinema, where obsession is framed as romance. Beezel exhibits a kind of toxic love, unsparingly devoted to his owner that he tries to annihilate everyone else who comes close. Such behavior aligns with the unhealthy obsession perpetuated within pop culture.
In the Indian context, one could reimagine Beezel as a cat. The possessive control could easily be a friend, parent, or lover — cloaking their control as love. Thus, the humor becomes a way to cope with something darker: the fear of losing the very people on whom we rely.
Perhaps that is why Gunn’s segment resonates with people, even with his intended target of Western culture. Beneath the Western satire and animated absurdity, there is something universal about the fine line where love transforms into something unhealthy.
Very few know that Beezel almost didn’t make it to the film Movie 43. The studio thought it was “too weird” and “too disturbing” for the general audience. Gunn had to defend the scene and claimed that the outrageous tone was the point. The animation team put in all their effort, working late to help deliver the visual effects, even with the tight budget.
In an interview, Elizabeth Banks commented on the scene where Beezel attacks her. With the absence of a real opponent, and a green screen, she had to mentally prepare to act as though she was being assaulted and “attacked by a cartoon cat” snatched all her focus.
Post production was no different in the chaos. To complete Beezel’s voice, the audio team juxtaposed different animal sounds and human laughter, sounding threatening yet cartoonish. Gunn’s approach to perfect his vision annoyed everyone and drastically shaped Beezel’s rhythmic voice pattern that was a dissonance of innocence and perversion.
The Legacy of a Misunderstood Monster
Years later, Beezel remains a small but striking part of the larger puzzle that is Movie 43. While the anthology faded into infamy, Gunn, Banks, and Marsden moved on to bigger, more well-received projects. Nonetheless, we still have this small segment—bizarre, disturbing, and oddly emotional—as a testament that even chaos can conceal a certain order.
Absurdly, and perhaps the more disappointingly, Beezel captures a universal truth, one that we still have to reckon with in the Indian emotional landscape: unbridled love can consume the lover and the loved. Under the uncomfortable laughter, and perhaps even a darker, more complex story, Gunn tells a very human story that reminds us that one the with under the fur, and in the very darkest of comedies, there is always a heart.
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