Review: The Whale
Charlie (Brendan Fraser) is a morbidly obese man who never leaves his house. His friend, Liz (Hong Chau) is his main care taker. Knowing he doesn't have that much longer to live, he attempts to forge a relationship with his estranged daughter Ellie. (Sadie Sink)
Much has been made of Fraser's performance in this and everything you heard is true. He's tremendous and I'm glad he's getting so much attention for this. A movie like this isn't going to work with anyone. Either you'll view it as a week in the life of a morbidly obese person, or you'll view it as making fun of that person. I can see both sides of that, even if I didn't view it as the latter.
This film is based on a play, and when you have that type of setting, you really need your actors to make it feel like it's transcending that medium. Fraser and Chau are the only two that do that. Sadie Sink's Ellie is given one mode the entire movie, and that mode is MAD. She has a right to be of course, but there's no nuance to her performance and even the way she gets up and walks from one side of the room to the other is exaggerated and felt like it was meant for the stage. It doesn't help that Charlie continuously tells Ellie how wonderful she is, and as an audience member I was kind of like "...are you sure? Because she's kind of awful."
There's also this weird subplot with a missionary played by Ty Simpkins, who bless his heart still cannot act. For a second, you think it's going to get interesting, but then it turns into nothing.
I wish this was a better movie. Fraser and Chau deserve it and there are moments where I think it works well, but I was hoping for more.
Grade: C+
Oh, that’s a bummer but I’m not surprised because I heard all about his performance but not much about the film itself. I can relate to him always saying she is wonderful even when she is not. I have a niece, my only niece...or nephew ...she’s it. She is non-binary and I have tried my best, always, to say “they” and not make any reference to she or he but I goofed up. I texted how proud I am of my wonderful niece and he text was angry just saying not to call her that. She got angry at me when I was happy that Gary Oldman won the Oscar and she hated that he won because she labelled him the same as Harvey Weinstein. I didn’t agree but it ended that she called Churchill an asshole and she didn’t talk to me in months. I would do my best to praise her and I meant it but, in the end, she said she found me insensitive and judgemental in every conversation we ever had and needs to separate from me. That was last year, Sept. when my hubby got a kidney stone, a hernia operation, I lost my job after 31 yrs and then I had my total hysterectomy. When you go through this you try, weirdly to praise them when they don’t deserve it. They do but...they don’t. Ugh..I just blecchhhed everything out didn’t I? Lol
ReplyDeleteOh no! That's terrible. This might hit very close to home for you when you see it. I find "they" as a pronoun to be easier and easier to use. A lot of the NB people I know in my real life don't exclusively use it, they use she/they or he/they. Finding a term or niece or nephew would be tough though, because"nibling" which I see used often just kind of makes me cringe. Hopefully we think of a better word for it to include NB folks.
DeleteI was going to watch this a few weeks ago but I didn't have the time as I was helping my mother out with other things. I'll still try and seek this out mainly for Brendan Fraser and Darren Aronofsky.
ReplyDeleteIt could've been worse considering that James Corden was going to be in the film. Oh man, that would've just closed down every movie theater by that point.
We really dodged a bullet with Corden in this role. I never would've bothered with it lol
DeleteI'm curious to see this but at the same time I'm a bit worried it's overhyped. Still I'm glad for Fraser who seems like a really nice guy who deserves a comeback.
ReplyDeleteEven though it's not perfect, I still think it's worth seeing.
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