Movie Review

Brendan Fraser is Oscar worthy in distressing-but-empathetic The Whale

Since the start of his career, Darren Aronofsky has been unafraid of making moviegoers uncomfortable. Whether it’s detailing the depths of drug addiction in Requiem for a Dream, showing the brutality of wrestling in The Wrestler, or making a brutal environmental allegory in Mother!, Aronofsky often goes to extremes to tell his stories.

The Whale fits right in with his previous works, as it focuses on Charlie (Brendan Fraser), a morbidly obese man who is unable to leave his apartment in an unnamed town in Idaho. Charlie works from home as a remote English professor, and is cared for by his friend Liz (Hong Chau), who brings him food and checks his health every time she visits.

Photo courtesy of A24

Brendan Fraser in The Whale

Charlie is also visited by Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a missionary for a church called New Life, and Ellie (Sadie Sink), his daughter from a failed marriage that ended when Charlie left his wife for a man. Each person who enters the apartment impacts Charlie’s life in a different way, but the reality of his health situation may mean that there is little they can do to actually help him.

Directed by Aronofsky but written by Samuel D. Hunter (who adapted his own play), the film will be tough to watch for many. Aronofsky does not shy away from the reality of Charlie’s life in the slightest, including his need to use a walker to get around, his continued eating of very unhealthy food, and showing Charlie with his shirt off or naked on multiple occasions, giving a full glimpse at the level of his obesity.

But even as we’re witness to the worst part of Charlie’s life, the film makes sure to show that he’s much more than just his body. As seen with his Zoom interactions with his students or his conversations with Liz, Thomas, and Ellie, Charlie gives real thought to academics and the world around him. His control in those areas makes it even sadder that he is unable to rein in his personal impulses.

There’s an easy joke to be made about the title of The Whale, but it goes deeper than just the obvious comparison. From the start of the film, Charlie is shown to be obsessed with one particular essay about Moby Dick, a metaphor that extends to more than his appearance. His musings on that essay and writing in general makes him a truly empathetic character, not just one who garners pity or disgust.

While the film takes place almost entirely within the confines of Charlie’s dark apartment, Aronofsky uses plenty of different viewpoints and angles to keep it from becoming too claustrophobic. Keeping the film in one area also allows the details of Charlie’s life to be fully grasped, showing a lot of sad things, but others that are oddly hopeful.

Fraser’s performance is, in a word, astonishing. Laden with who knows how many pounds of seamless prosthetics, he makes you feel every inch of Charlie’s physical and mental suffering. The erstwhile star of The Mummy series has rarely been in consideration for acting awards, but he deserves to be at the top of the list for Best Actor at next year’s Academy Awards. He’s aided by strong performances from Chau, Sink, Simpkins, and, in a small role, Samantha Morton.

While The Whale makes for distressing viewing at times, it is balanced out by compassionate storytelling and well-rounded characters, making this one of Aronofsky’s most relatable films. The filmmaking and Fraser’s appearance and performance make it impossible to look away.

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The Whale opens in theaters on December 21.

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Movie Review

Comedy all-stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd can't save Anaconda sequel

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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