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"The Whale" is an abhorrent film, but it also features excellent performances.

It gawks at the grotesquerie of its central figure beneath the guise of sentimentality, but it also offers sharp exchanges between its characters that ring with bracing honesty.

It's the kind of film you should probably see if only to have an informed, thoughtful discussion about it, but it's also one you probably won't want to watch.

This aligns it with Darren Aronofsky's movies in general, which can often be a challenging sit. The director is notorious for putting his actors (and his audiences) through the wringer, whether it's Jennifer Connolly's drug addict in " Requiem for a Dream ," Mickey Rourke's aging athlete in " The Wrestler ," Natalie Portman's obsessed ballerina in " Black Swan ," or Jennifer Lawrence's besieged wife in "mother!" (For the record, I'm a fan of Aronofsky's work in general.)

But the difference between those films and "The Whale" is their intent, whether it's the splendor of their artistry or the thrill of their provocation. There's a verve to those movies, an unpredictability, an undeniable daring, and a virtuoso style. They feature images you've likely never seen before or since, but they'll undoubtedly stay with you afterward.

"The Whale" may initially feel gentler, but its main point seems to be sticking the camera in front of Brendan Fraser , encased in a fat suit that makes him appear to weigh 600 pounds, and asking us to wallow in his deterioration. In theory, we are meant to pity him or at least find sympathy for his physical and psychological plight by the film's conclusion. But in reality, the overall vibe is one of morbid fascination for this mountain of a man. Here he is, knocking over an end table as he struggles to get up from the couch; there he is, cramming candy bars in his mouth as he Googles "congestive heart failure." We can tsk-tsk all we like between our mouthfuls of popcorn and Junior Mints while watching Fraser's Charlie gobble greasy fried chicken straight from the bucket or inhale a giant meatball sub with such alacrity that he nearly chokes to death. The message "The Whale" sends us home with seems to be: Thank God that's not us.

In working from Samuel D. Hunter's script, based on Hunter's stage play, Aronofsky doesn't appear to be as interested in understanding these impulses and indulgences as much as pointing and staring at them. His depiction of Charlie's isolation within his squalid Idaho apartment includes a scene of him masturbating to gay porn with such gusto that he almost has a heart attack, a moment made of equal parts shock value and shame. But then, in a jarring shift, the tone eventually turns maudlin with Charlie's increasing martyrdom.

Within the extremes of this approach, Fraser brings more warmth and humanity to the role than he's afforded on the page. We hear his voice first; Charlie is a college writing professor who teaches his students online from behind the safety of a black square. And it's such a welcoming and resonant sound, full of decency and humor. Fraser's been away for a while, but his contradictions have always made him an engaging screen presence—the contrast of his imposing physique and playful spirit. He does so much with his eyes here to give us a glimpse into Charlie's sweet but tortured soul, and the subtlety he's able to convey goes a long way toward making "The Whale" tolerable.

But he's also saddled with a screenplay that spells out every emotion in ways that are so clunky as to be groan-inducing. At Charlie's most desperate, panicky moments, he soothes himself by reading or reciting a student's beloved essay on Moby Dick , which—in part—gives the film its title and will take on increasing significance. He describes the elusive white whale of Herman Melville's novel as he stands up, shirtless, and lumbers across the living room, down the hall, and toward the bedroom with a walker. At this moment, you're meant to marvel at the elaborate makeup and prosthetic work on display; you're more likely to roll your eyes at the writing.

"He thinks his life will be better if he can just kill this whale, but in reality, it won't help him at all," he intones in a painfully obvious bit of symbolism. "This book made me think about my own life," he adds as if we couldn't figure that out for ourselves.

A few visitors interrupt the loneliness of his days, chiefly Hong Chau as his nurse and longtime friend, Liz. She's deeply caring but also no-nonsense, providing a crucial spark to these otherwise dour proceedings. Aronofsky's longtime cinematographer, the brilliant Matthew Libatique , has lit Charlie's apartment in such a relentlessly dark and dim fashion to signify his sorrow that it's oppressive. Once you realize the entirety of the film will take place within these cramped confines, it sends a shiver of dread. And the choice to tell this story in the boxy, 1.33 aspect ratio further heightens its sense of dour claustrophobia.

But then "Stranger Things" star Sadie Sink arrives as Charlie's rebellious, estranged daughter, Ellie; her mom was married to Charlie before he came out as a gay man. While their first meeting in many years is laden with exposition about the pain and awkwardness of their time apart, the two eventually settle into an interesting, prickly rapport. Sink brings immediacy and accessibility to the role of the sullen but bright teenager, and her presence, like Chau's, improves "The Whale" considerably. Her casting is also spot-on in her resemblance to Fraser, especially in her expressive eyes.

The arrival of yet another visitor—an earnest, insistent church missionary played by Ty Simpkins —feels like a total contrivance, however. Allowing him inside the apartment repeatedly makes zero sense, even within the context that Charlie believes he's dying and wants to make amends. He even says to this sweet young man: "I'm not interested in being saved." And yet, the exchanges between Sink and Simpkins provide some much-needed life and emotional truth. The subplot about their unlikely friendship feels like something from a totally different movie and a much more interesting one.

Instead, Aronofsky insists on veering between cruelty and melodrama, with Fraser stuck in the middle, a curiosity on display.

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Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

The Whale (2022)

Rated R for language, some drug use and sexual content.

117 minutes

Brendan Fraser as Charlie

Sadie Sink as Ellie

Hong Chau as Liz

Ty Simpkins as Thomas

Samantha Morton as Mary

Sathya Sridharan as Dan

• Darren Aronofsky

Writer (based on the play by)

• Samuel D. Hunter

Cinematographer

• Matthew Libatique
• Andrew Weisblum
• Rob Simonsen

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Breaking news, emmys 2024: list of nominees, ‘the whale’ review: brendan fraser is heart-wrenching in darren aronofsky’s portrait of regret and deliverance.

Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Ty Simpkins and Samantha Morton also appear in this chamber drama adapted by Samuel D. Hunter from his play about grief and salvation.

By David Rooney

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With its airless single setting and main character whose dire health crisis makes the ticking clock on his life apparent from the start, The Whale seemed a tricky prospect for screen transfer. Aronofsky succeeds not by artificially opening up the piece but by leaning into its theatricality, immersing us in the claustrophobia that has become inescapable for Fraser’s character, Charlie. The scene structure of a focal character confined to a few rooms while secondary characters come and go, at times overlapping, remains very much that of a play.

Shooting in the snug 1.33 aspect ratio might seem to box us in even more, and the shortage of light seeping in from outside Charlie’s apartment is perhaps a tad symbolically heavy-handed. But DP Matthew Libatique’s spry camera and Andrew Weisblum’s dynamic editing bring surprising movement to the static situation. The one significant questionable choice is the overkill of Rob Simonsen’s emotionally emphatic score, rather than trusting the actors to do that work.

Aronofsky and Hunter startle the audience early on, not just by exposing Charlie’s severe obesity — Fraser wears a mix of latex suit plus digital prosthetics designed by Adrien Morot — but by revealing this mountain of a man to be still capable of sexual desire. Charlie keeps the camera off during the online writing course he teaches, claiming that the webcam on his laptop is broken. But its video component functions just fine when moments later he’s watching gay porn and furiously masturbating.

Charlie’s crisis is averted by the arrival of his health care worker friend Liz ( Hong Chau , wonderful), who is used to dealing with his emergencies. She tells him his congestive heart failure and sky-high blood pressure mean he’ll likely be dead within a week. Exasperated at his continuing refusal to go to a hospital, ostensibly due to lack of health insurance, Liz is often impatient and angry with Charlie. But her love for him is such that she reluctantly indulges his fast-food addiction, bringing him buckets of fried chicken and meatball subs.

Grief is the ailment that unites Charlie and sharp-tongued Liz, also making her ferocious with the persistently present Thomas. Her adoptive father is a senior council member at New Life, and she blames the death of her brother Alan on the church. Alan was a former student of Charlie’s who became the love of his life but could never get over his father’s condemnation, developing a chronic eating disorder that eventually killed him.

The tidy symmetry of one partner starving himself to death and the other’s self-destruction happening through gluttony is a little schematic, just as the Moby Dick elements are a literary flourish that shows the writer’s hand. But Hunter’s script and the intimacy of the actors’ work keep the melancholy drama grounded and credible.

The teenager’s spiky confrontations with her gentle giant of a father are matched by her needling exchanges with Thomas, whom she manipulates the same way she does Charlie and her hard-bitten mother. Sink (a Stranger Things regular) doesn’t hold back in a characterization that justifies Mary’s description of her as “evil.” But the residual love beneath both women’s screechy outbursts and hurt distance is slowly revealed in some genuinely moving moments, notably as Charlie reminisces with Mary about a family trip to Oregon when he was much less heavy, the last time he went swimming.

Every member of the small ensemble makes an impression, even the mostly unseen Sathya Sridharan as a friendly pizza delivery guy who never fails to ask about Charlie’s welfare from behind the closed apartment door.

The standout, alongside Fraser, is Chau, following her slyly funny work in Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up with a nuanced turn as a woman knocked sideways by loss and bracing for another devastating hit of it. In both cases, her inability to intervene has left her helpless, enraged, exhausted and in visible pain. There’s also humor in Liz’s annoyance with Charlie’s innate positivity, which endures no matter how bad his circumstances become. In a movie that’s partly about the human instinct to care for other people, Chau breaks your heart.

His physicality, straining to navigate awkward spaces and maneuver a body that requires more strength than Charlie has left, is distressing to witness, as are his fits of coughing, choking, gasping for breath. On the few occasions where he struggles to stand to his full height, he fills the frame, a figure of tremendous pathos less because of his size than his suffering. But in a film about salvation, it’s the inextinguishable humanity of Fraser’s performance that floors you.

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‘The Whale’ Review: Brendan Fraser Is Sly and Moving as a Morbidly Obese Man, but Darren Aronofsky’s Film Is Hampered by Its Contrivances

The director seamlessly adapts Samuel D. Hunter's play but can't transcend the play's problems.

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“The Whale” is based on a stageplay by Samuel D. Hunter, who also wrote the script, and the entire film takes place in Charlie’s apartment, most of it unfolding in that seedy bookish living room. Aronofsky doesn’t necessarily “open up” the play, but working with the great cinematographer Matthew Libatique he doesn’t need to. Shot without flourishes, the movie has a plainspoken visual flow to it. And given what a sympathetic and fascinating character Fraser makes Charlie, we’re eager to settle in with him in that depressive lair, and to get to the bottom of the film’s inevitable two dramatic questions: How did Charlie get this way? And can he be saved?

In case there is any doubt he needs saving, “The Whale” quickly establishes that he’s an addict living a life of isolated misery and self-disgust, scarfing away his despair (at various points we see him going at a bucket of fried chicken, a drawer full of candy, and voluminous take-out pizzas from Gambino’s, all of which is rather sad to behold). Charlie teaches an expository writing seminar at an online college, doing it on Zoom, which looks very today (though the film, for no good reason, is set during the presidential primary season of 2016), with video images of the students surrounding a small black square at the center of the screen. That’s where Charlie should be; he tells the students his laptop camera isn’t working, which is his way of hiding his body and the shame he feels about it. But he’s a canny teacher who knows what good writing is, even if his lessons about structure and topic sentences fall on apathetic ears.

Charlie has a friend of sorts, Liz (Hong Chau), who happens to be a nurse, and when she comes over and learns that his blood pressure is in the 240/130 range, she declares it an emergency situation. He has congestive heart failure; with that kind of blood pressure, he’ll be dead in a week. But Charlie refuses to go the hospital, and will continue to do so. He’s got a handy excuse. With no health insurance, if he seeks medical care he’ll run up tens of thousands of dollars in bills. As Liz points out, it’s better to be in debt than dead. But Charlie’s resistance to healing himself bespeaks a deeper crisis. He doesn’t want help. If he dies (and that’s the film’s basic suspense), it will essentially be a suicide.

It’s hard not to notice that Liz, given how much she’s taking care of Charlie, has a spiky and rather abrasive personality. We think: Okay, that’s who she is. But a couple of other characters enter the movie — and when Ellie (Sadie Sink), Charlie’s 17-year-old daughter, shows up, we notice that she has a really spiky and abrasive personality. Does Charlie just happen to be surrounded by hellcats and cranks? Or is there something in Hunter’s dialogue that is simply, reflexively over-the-top in its theatrical hostility?

And what a rage it is! Sadie Sink, from “Stranger Things,” acts with a fire and directness that recalls the young Lindsay Lohan, but the volatile spitfire she’s playing is bitter — at her father, and at the world — in an absolutist way that rings absolutely false. Lots of teenagers are angry and alienated, but they’re not just angry and alienated. There are shades of vulnerability that come with being that age. We keep waiting for Ellie to show another side, to reflect the fact that the father she resents is still, on some level … her father.

“The Whale,” while it has a captivating character at its center, turns out to be equal parts sincerity and hokum. The movie carries us along, tethering the audience to Fraser’s intensely lived-in and touching performance, yet the more it goes on the more its drama is interlaced with nagging contrivances, like the whole issue of why this father and daughter were ever so separated from each other. We learn that after Charlie and Ellie’s mother, Mary (Samantha Morton), were divorced, Mary got full custody and cut Charlie off from Ellie. But they never stopped living in the same small town, and even single parents who don’t have custody are legally entitled to see their children. Charlie, we’re told, was eager to have kids; he lived with Ellie and her mother until the girl was eight. So why would he have just … let her go?

There’s one other major character, a lost young missionary for the New Life Church named Thomas, and though Ty Simpkins plays him appealingly, the way this cult-like church plays into the movie feels like one hard-to-swallow conceit too many. This matters a lot, because if we can’t totally buy what’s happening, we won’t be as moved by Charlie’s road to redemption. Near the end, there’s a very moving moment. It’s when Charlie is discussing the essay on “Moby Dick” he’s been reading pieces of throughout the film, and we learn where the essay comes from and why it means so much to him. If only the rest of the movie were that convincing! But most of “The Whale” simply isn’t as good as Brendan Fraser’s performance. For what he brings off, though, it deserves to be seen.     

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival, Sept. 4, 2022. Running time: 117 MIN.

• Production: An A24 release of a Protozoa Pictures production. Producers: Darren Aronofsky, Jeremy Dawson, Art Handel. Executive producers: Scott Franklin, Tyson Bidner.
• Crew: Director: Darren Aronofsky. Screenplay: Samuel D. Hunter. Camera: Matthew Libatique. Editor: Andrew Weisblum. Music: Rob Simonsen.
• With: Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Ty Simpkins, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, Sathya Sridharan.

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Brendan Fraser Deserves an Oscar for ‘The Whale.’ He Also Deserves a Better Movie

By David Fear

Charlie is 600 lbs. This is the first thing you notice about him; this is the first thing you are meant to notice about him. He’s always been a big guy, he says, but he “let it get out of control.” On the Zooms in which Charlie teaches online English courses — he’s a professor — his voice is always emanating from a solid square of black, the video permanently disabled, the word “Instructor” the only visual his students associate with him.

But when we first see Charlie in The Whale , director Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s award-winning 2012 play, we get to observe all of him: a bulk of a man, his body bloated and swollen, sitting deep in the corner of his couch, masturbating furiously to online porn. Severe chest pains interrupt his endeavor. Only the arrival of a random stranger, who happens to find the apartment door unlocked, saves his life.

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Fraser is a dream collaborator in that respect, and yet The Whale seems hellbent on making you view Charlie as a grotesque. There’s something monstrous about the way it keeps framing him, how it seems to almost fetishize every roll of his flesh and put the sound of his greasy chomping on fried chicken so high in the sound mix. What this man is experiencing — a horrible sense of shame that’s metastasized into self-destruction — is not pretty. But the movie seems to revel a little too enthusiastically in its own ugliness. That doom-laden score by Rob Simonsen keeps rubbing the despair even deeper into your face. For every sunbeam of humanity Fraser lets shine through this soul, the film summons a half-dozen dark clouds to try and dampen it.

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A reclusive, morbidly obese English teacher attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter. A reclusive, morbidly obese English teacher attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter. A reclusive, morbidly obese English teacher attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter.

• Darren Aronofsky
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• 50 wins & 120 nominations total

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• Trivia For the role, Brendan Fraser had to don a heavy prosthetic suit that he wore for hours. According to a piece in "Variety", he told members of the media in attendance at the Venice International Film Festival, "I developed muscles I did not know I had. I even felt a sense of vertigo at the end of the day when all the appliances were removed. It was like stepping off the dock onto a boat in Venice, that undulating. It gave me appreciation for those whose bodies are similar. You need to be an incredibly strong person, mentally and physically, to inhabit that physical being."
• Goofs Charlie nicks his skin when shaving, but the cut disappears in the next shots.

Charlie : Do you ever get the feeling that people are incapable of not caring?

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‘The Whale’ Review: Brendan Fraser Is Towering in a Lesser Darren Aronofsky

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. A24 releases the film in theaters on Friday, December 9.

There are two things to be a little worried about and one thing to be extremely excited about when coming into “ The Whale .”

The first element of concern is director Darren Aronofsky, who admittedly has made exceptional films like “Requiem for a Dream” and “Pi” and gotten career-defining performances out of his leads in “Black Swan” and “The Wrestler.” But his last two films, “Noah” and “mother!,” succumbed to all his worst instincts, creating bloated self-indulgent nonsense that was actively painful to sit through.

In “The Whale,” also slightly worrying is the use of “fat suits,” which contemporary audiences are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with. Much of the use of these so-called fat suits has been to create fat-phobic jokes, particularly by turning thin movie stars like Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, and Courteney Cox into walking punchlines. Even when the usage itself is fat-phobic, in the case of Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp in “American Crime Story,” there’s also the consideration that heavier actors who often struggle to get roles aren’t getting the opportunity to play fat parts.

However, most of those coming to “The Whale” may brim with goodwill because of Brendan Fraser. Having suffered well-documented injury and abuse from the film industry, Fraser retreated from Hollywood, leaving behind heartbroken Gen X-ers and millennials who adored him in a wide range of roles, from delightful himbos to tragic underdogs and wise-cracking action heroes. After a few tentative steps back into the spotlight in small roles and television appearances, the comeback was further solidified when he was cast in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Steven Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move.” Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale” makes it official: The Brendanaissance is on!

Fraser gives a towering performance, in every sense of the word, as Charlie, a 600-pound man who teaches writing courses online and never leaves his apartment. Despite the best efforts of his nurse best friend Liz (Hong Chau), Charlie refuses to go to the hospital, even though he is displaying signs of congestive heart failure and has a blood pressure of 238/134. Charlie has never recovered since the death of Alan, the “love of his life,” a few years prior and has spent the time since on his sofa, slowly eating himself to death. This final week almost operates like an introvert’s companion piece to “Leaving Las Vegas,” a similar journey in self-destruction, but here with a quiet commitment to loneliness. The action of “The Whale,” true to the play it’s based on, never leaves Charlie’s small apartment.

The fat suit is what it is. There are plenty of valid reasons to think this film has unacceptably fat-phobic undertones and positions, particularly a scene where it seems to suggest a person could overdose on mayonnaise like it’s uncut heroin. And many could be triggered by a central fat character being openly called “disgusting” throughout. But in terms of practical effects, it’s hard to not be impressed by the prosthetics, particularly around Fraser’s face, as they do appear reasonably realistic. He’s able to give a funny and devastating performance seemingly without hindrance.

Charlie knows that he’s only got a few more days, so he decides to reconnect with his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), whom he left behind when he fell in love with Alan eight years ago. She’s now 16 and flunking high school. The pair’s only contact has been through child-support payment and sporadic updates via her mother. Ellie is a nightmarish caricature of a teenage girl. Sink unwisely keeps her performance at a 10 in every moment, which is cumulatively grating. Respite comes when her mother, played by the always-excellent Samantha Morton, comes to see Charlie about their troubled daughter landing the film’s biggest laugh in a well-timed “Charlie! She’s evil!”

Despite the hilarity of that cutting assessment, “The Whale” actually works best at its least cruel. When Fraser gets to show off Charlie’s wit in a back-and-forth with a persistent and hypocrite missionary Thomas (Ty Simpkins), gently smiling as he reassures him, “I’ve read the Bible. I thought it was devastating.” Or indeed when Liz jokingly threatens to stab him, and he gives her a hug and tenderly makes her laugh by whispering, “What’s that gonna do? My internal organs are two feet in at least.” When his confrontation with Morton is so filled with mutual compassion, it’s hard to believe that this is from the same film that framed Charlie slovenly eating a chicken wing with such brazen disgust.

Without Brendan Fraser’s innate charm and ability to project gentle sadness through the slightest flicker of his huge blue eyes, “The Whale” wouldn’t have that much else going for it. Faultless performances from Morton and Chau illuminate complicated relationships with Charlie, a man at once lovable, frustrating, and dishonest.

Aronofsky’s direction is cautious but brings a cinematic flair, which plays into Charlie’s claustrophobic existence rather than just feeling burdened by the story’s origin on the stage (where it is confined to a single set). Samuel D. Hunter’s script has elements to recommend it. The “Moby Dick” allusions, which seem onerous in the film’s beginning, build to something moving and, in the film’s final moments, even profound.

For Fraser, “The Whale” is a confident leap forward into the movie-star status that he rightfully deserves. For the normally more muted Venice audience who typically scramble for the exit the moment the film ends, just the sight of Fraser’s name at the end credits made the crowd turn back to the screen to cheer and applaud the actor’s triumphant return. If that rapturous applause carries on throughout awards season, that may prove the most wonderful and moving moment of this whale’s journey.

“The Whale” premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. A24 will release it in theatres on Friday, December 9.

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Review: ‘The Whale’ is a hard but astounding film to watch

This image released by A24 shows Brendan Fraser in a scene from “The Whale.” (A24 via AP)

This image released by A24 shows Hong Chau in a scene from “The Whale.” (A24 via AP)

This image released by A24 shows Sadie Sink in a scene from “The Whale.” (A24 via AP)

Brendan Fraser poses for a portrait in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, to promote his film “The Whale.” (Photo by Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)

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The center of gravity of “The Whale” is obviously the 600-pound man at its center. Look closely, though, and he’s the one with a soul as light as a feather.

Charlie is a reclusive, morbidly obese English literature teacher unable and unwilling to stop eating himself to death. As his health woes mount and his life expectancy is put at just a week, Charlie struggles to reacquaint himself with his estranged daughter. We meet him on Monday and the film goes day by day to Friday.

Charlie is a gentle giant, not raging at his fast approaching demise. He’s an optimist and a fierce believer in truth even though there is nothing in his world reinforcing either. “The Whale” is not always pleasant to watch but the payoff and performances make it an astounding film.

Stationary and wheezing on his couch, Charlie is repeatedly visited by a constellation of people — a friendly nurse, his teenage daughter and a young missionary from an apocalyptical church. They all need something from this well-meaning but broken man — spiritual, medical or familial. They are all broken, too.

The movie, based and adapted from the off-Broadway play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter, is directed by Darren Aronofsky, who helmed such dark tales as “Requiem for a Dream” and “Black Swan.” Hunter’s depiction of the mortification of the flesh perfectly meets a director enamored by the grotesque.

Brendan Fraser has earned lots of Oscar buzz for playing Charlie, allowing his signature puppy dog face to remain despite a massive body suit and swelling prosthetics. And why not? It is one of the most moving performances in years, full of humanity and a redemptive triumph for an actor who hid his talent in quickly forgotten films like “Blast from the Past,” “Hair Brained” and “Airheads.”

The whole cast is perfect, from Sadie Sink as Charlie’s spiky daughter, Hong Chau as his foul-mouthed nursing angel, Ty Simpkins as the missionary with a hidden past and Samantha Morton as his ex-wife with simmering anger and yet still love. There are steady references to Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick,” which gives the film the title and its doomed vibe.

Charlie has ballooned ever since the death of his same-sex partner, who apparently willed himself to death by wasting away in starvation after their relationship was condemned by his church-leading father. Charlie has apparently decided to die the opposite way.

He is sadly apologetic to his nurse — “I’m sorry,” he says continually — and shuts the video camera on his laptop during his online classes. Even the pizza delivery man doesn’t know what he looks like. “Who would want me to be part of their life?” he asks.

There has been fear that the film might be fatphobic and it’s true that cinematographer Matthew Libatique often leans into unflattering ways to show Charlie, soaping in a shower, straining to stand up or touch the floor, covered in sweat and shoving pizza or fried chicken into his mouth. Maybe some of that could have been touched on instead of lingered on.

But body weight is not what the writer and director want to focus on here. It’s more the weight of guilt and love and faith. “I just want to know I did one good thing in my life!” Charlie shouts. One feels that the underlying issue in “The Whale” could have been obesity as easily as cancer or alcoholism or a blood disorder. Hunter is exploring salvation, redemption, determinism and family.

The play has been sharpened for the screen but there’s no escaping the fact that it is rooted inside Charlie’s Idaho apartment, which he shuffles about in on a walker or later a wheelchair. This doesn’t make for sweeping cinema. Sometimes the apartment feels confining like a ship, adding to the Melville theme.

Some of the filmic attempts are forced, like the symbolically heavy bird that Charlie feeds outside his window, the three times actors rush to leave the apartment only to stop and turn back, and the heavy rain that builds as the film’s climax nears. But this is a film that stays with you and changes you. It is heavy, indeed.

“The Whale,” a A24 release that is in movie theaters on Friday, is rated R for “language, some drug use and sexual content.” Running time: 117 minutes. Four stars out of four.

MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Online: https://a24films.com/films/the-whale

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

The Whale Review: Brendan Fraser Makes A Hard Watch Worth It

We see dimensions of [brendan fraser] we’ve never had the opportunity to see before in the whale, and it’s the best he’s ever been....

As countless movies have shown us, we all love a great comeback story. Counterbalancing the disappointment that comes when an individual fails to live up to or take advantage of their potential, their successful return is an affirmation that talents can fade, but also resurge. This is the magic of the Brenaissance. Millennials grew up on the films of Brendan Fraser – from School Ties , to Airheads , to George Of The Jungle , to The Mummy – and after a few years out of the spotlight, he’s now being waved excitedly back into it as the world remembers what he can do at the top of his game.

Audiences have missed his charisma and goofy charm on the big screen. He’s an enchanting performer, and that’s accentuated in Darren Aronofsky ’s The Whale : a film that has the actor serving as a powerful, bright light in a dark pool of despair.

Of course, that Aronofsky would create something you wouldn’t describe as a pleasant movie-going experience is hardly surprising. Whether it’s the metaphorical horrors of climate change in mother! , the literal horrors of drug abuse in Requiem For A Dream , or the spinning descent into madness that is Black Swan , his movies are emotional endurance trials that never flinch from their subject matter. In that respect, The Whale is very much on brand, as we are locked in a small apartment with a 600-pound man who is on the verge of death from congestive heart failure, but while it’s notably buoyed by its star’s natural sparkle, the movie is also a harsh watch that is rooted in a questionable perspective.

Brendan Fraser plays Charlie, an English teacher who hosts classes remotely and begins the film barely surviving a cardiac episode. His closest friend, Liz (Hong Chau), who happens to be a nurse, warns him that he is going to die if he doesn’t go to the hospital, but Charlie explains that he has neither health insurance nor the money to pay for the medical bills. Accepting his fate and resigning himself to death, he strives to find some closure in his life by reconnecting with his estranged daughter, Ellie ( Sadie Sink ).

In the days that follow, Charlie bribes Ellie to spend time with him in exchange for doing her English homework so that she doesn’t fail out of school, and he gets regular visits from a religious missionary (Ty Simpkins) who believes that he is meant to “save” the protagonist. Through these encounters and time with Liz, he confronts his life’s hard choices and the devastating loss of the love of his life.

Heavy and depressing as The Whale is, Brendan Fraser’s captivating and powerful performance lifts your heart.

The Whale is based on the play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter, and if that’s something you don’t know before the film stars, it’s something that becomes very obvious as you watch. Save for a couple extremely brief moments and some ventures out on to the porch, the action is a lot like Charlie in that it is confined to the character’s dingy, messy, yellowed home. What prevents the movie from feeling like a noxious trap, however, is what Brendan Fraser can do and the lightness that he has as a performer. As dark and dire as the character study gets, and as off-putting as he is meant to be presented, Charlie has his own kind of irrepressible optimism that is magnetic through the misery .

While the protagonist may be on the verge of death, his passion and love is what keeps him alive, and keeps that front and center. When Charlie has Ellie write something for him in notebook, he doesn’t get upset that she comments on the smell of the apartment or that she hates everyone; he giggles when he discovers that what she is written is in the structure of a haiku. His life is portrayed as unpleasant and gross, but Fraser provides the work with a special effervescence that lets us see the humanity of the man we don’t see in the filmmaking. In a lot of ugliness, his love of the written word is beautiful, and that love is fully registered through his performance.

Obviously there is remarkable sadness as well, and the range showcased by the actor is phenomenal and heartbreaking. Charlie is motivated through his teaching and his desire to see his daughter have a good life, but he is also trapped in a state of mourning for the man that he loved, and Brendan Fraser makes the pain real and palpable. We see dimensions of the actor we’ve never had the opportunity to see before in The Whale , and it’s the best he’s ever been – and hopefully it’s one of many great performances still to come from his rejuvenated career.

Fatphobia criticisms against The Whale are justified with its mixed perspective of horror and intense pity.

Powerful and emotionally rich as Fraser’s performance is, however, the film does have a problematic viewpoint. While it might be a step to far to call it exploitative (in the sense of the film trying to elicit shock), the movie does have a way of stripping away Charlie’s personhood as he is rendered as a kind of pitiful creature that other characters either look on as a soul in need of saving or a disgusting horror. On a cold, technical level, the work is impressive, as the physical transformation the actor undergoes is startlingly realistic, but its portrayal of obesity will justifiably upset some people.

The Whale on the whole is going to earn a divisive response – again, let’s not forget that this is from the same filmmaker whose last movie had the distinction of earning an “F” grade from CinemaScore . Many are going to hate it for the bad taste it leaves in one’s mouth, but it also creates tremendous possibilities for Brendan Fraser back on the big screen, and that and what he does here as Charlie is worthy of appreciation.

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.

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The whale review: aronofsky's drama showcases a stunning performance by fraser [tiff].

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The Whale is being recognized for Brendan Fraser’s tremendous performance. And the actor, whose career was paused for a long while, deserves the accolades he is receiving for his turn as Charlie. Director Darren Aronofsky ’s latest feature, from a screenplay by Samuel D. Hunter, is powerful because of Fraser’s central performance. It’s the key to the movie’s success. While the film is determined to live in the pain felt and lobbed at its main character, there are moments of gentle vulnerability and contemplation in its exploration of guilt, redemption, grief, and trauma.

Charlie (Fraser) is a 600-pound English professor who is suffering from congestive heart failure. He lives alone and is primarily immobile, though he is visited often by his friend Liv (Hong Chau), who is also a nurse, and, frustratingly, by an annoyingly persistent missionary, Thomas (Ty Simpkins), who is trying to save Charlie. When Charlie is seized by pain, he reads from an essay about Moby-Dick to make him calm down and feel better. Knowing that he is reaching the end of his life, however, Charlie reaches out to his estranged daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), in the hopes of mending their relationship before he dies.

Related: The Whale Movie News & Updates: Everything We Know

Fraser’s performance is magnetic and nuanced. He imbues Charlie with so much optimism, kindness, and empathy. Whereas most of the characters, save for Liz, are pretty terrible and cruel, Charlie is not. The film acknowledges that he has been through a lot in his life. He lost the love of his life, he wasn’t able to be there for his daughter in the way he wanted to, and so on. Despite all the hardships, Charlie’s regrets and sadness don’t overcome his need to find pockets of light in an otherwise tragic situation. The Whale portrays Charlie through an empathetic lens. The story explores his character enough to understand him and his journey, from where he was to where his life ultimately led him. Other characters offer their sympathy and want to help, but it’s an instance where they themselves are lost and lashing out at someone who seems like an easy enough target. Charlie, however he is feeling, doesn’t take the bait most of the time.

The Whale is a poignant tale of grief, regret, and redemption. It sees Charlie looking back on his life — the joys and the missteps along the way — as death nears, but it also contemplates religion, sexuality, and parenthood. The film is bolstered by a riveting performance by Brendan Fraser , who portrays Charlie’s every emotion with sincerity and sensitivity. His performance is grounded and honest, beautiful in the way the actor deepens and humanizes Charlie. Without Fraser, The Whale wouldn’t be what it is, especially as aspects of the script are surface-level at best and unnecessarily melodramatic at worst. Still, Charlie’s journey, his desire to love and be loved, evokes a tender, compassionate emotional reaction. After all that he’s been through, the traumas he’s experienced, and shortcomings as a father, Charlie wants only to look upon the world and his life with bright, hopeful eyes and see the beauty in it. What Fraser manages to pull off in his performance is lovely, and it’s one of the strongest, most heartening aspects of the film.

Aronofsky’s film is not without its pitfalls. There’s a lot of verbal abuse thrown at Charlie, and daughter Ellie is especially abhorrent in her treatment of him. The cruelty in some of the characters’ actions and words can get excessive, making for a painful watch at times. This is especially true when Aronofsky’s direction showcases Charlie in a horrific light, one that is meant to disgust viewers instead of reaching for the empathy that is offered in other scenes. It’s as though the filmmakers wanted to subject Charlie to the worst of the worst before the film’s ending, and it’s this seeming desire to cause unending pain for the lead that might turn viewers off.

While The Whale is never dull, its over-the-top theatrical staging turns certain elements of the script into an aggressive melodrama that doesn’t always work. Character dialogue — save for Hong Chau as Liz, who brings equal parts heart and frustration to her role — reaches for excess in parts when thoughtful consideration would have sufficed. The Whale is nonetheless memorable, if one is able to sit through Charlie’s pain, because of its handling of regret, guilt, and grief. Though it often offers surface-level readings about religion and father-daughter relationships, in particular, the film is worth the watch for Fraser’s performance alone.

The Whale had its premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival on September 11. The film releases in theaters on December 9. It is 117 minutes long and is not yet rated.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky, The Whale is based on a 2012 stage play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter. The film star Brenden Fraser as Charlie, a reclusive and obese English teacher who, faced with his own mortality and guilt-ridden over his past, attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter Ellie, played by Sadie Sink. The film was part of Fraser's comeback to acting and earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor. 

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'The Whale' review: Brendan Fraser's soulful, Oscar-ready performance will blow you away

Darren Aronofsky’s remarkable “The Whale” makes waves in two ways: for Brendan Fraser ’s astounding and incredibly compassionate portrayal of an obese man seeking redemption, and as an empathy test in a supremely cynical social media landscape.

Heartbreaking and enrapturing, the psychological drama (★★★★ out of four; rated R; in select theaters now, nationwide Wednesday) is the intimate character study of a reclusive, 600-pound teacher with congestive heart failure who's yearning to make things right with his teenage daughter. “The Whale” is not only a showcase for Fraser; it also includes powerful performances from Sadie Sink and Hong Chau as it makes us ponder religion, mortality, kindness and the lens through which we see the world, all mostly from the confines of a second-floor apartment in Idaho.

For a while, Charlie (Fraser) has been hiding from people, be it the pizza guy who delivers his pepperoni-laden pies or the online creative-writing class he teaches. (Charlie tells his students his laptop webcam is broken during the video chats in which he also instructs them to be honest in their work.)

Golden Globes: Brendan Fraser says he won't attend after 'history' with HFPA

Because of his girth, he sticks mainly to his couch, which is where a young missionary named Thomas (Ty Simpkins) finds Charlie at the opening of the movie: Thomas happens to be knocking on his door when Charlie is having chest pains while watching gay porn, and he begs Thomas to read an essay about Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” a paper that both calms Charlie and plays a key role in the narrative.

Thomas quickly meets Liz (Chau), Charlie’s nurse – and the sister of his late partner – who implores him to go to the hospital because of his scary vital signs yet brings him meatball subs with extra cheese. And soon after, another important character enters: Charlie’s estranged daughter, Ellie (Sink) , on the cusp of not graduating high school, shows up with nothing good to say to her dad after he left her and mom Mary (Samantha Morton) when Ellie was 8. Charlie knows the clock's ticking on his ailing ticker and is desperate to get to know his kid again, so he makes her a deal to hand over his life savings if he can help polish her school essays.

Ranked: All the best movies we saw at Toronto Film Festival, ranked (including 'The Whale')

Samuel D. Hunter has adapted his own 2012 play to the screen, and the staged aspect is a plus. The story sticks closely to Charlie’s living room, though he does move around the place – slowly and painfully – as his condition worsens and his character (and those around him) are developed. And while Aronofsky often has a penchant for dark fantasy (see: “mother!” and “Black Swan”), “The Whale” remains grounded, though not without some unsettling aspects: One binge-eating scene in particular, when Charlie is at an emotional low, is a harrowing (and deeply effective) horror show of pizza slices, mayo and potato chips.

The film challenges us in important ways – when you see Charlie, do you see the man or just the body? – and the primary reason it works is Fraser. He’s a great actor here at the phenomenal top of his game (where's that best-actor Oscar nomination already?) and on his watch, the role is neither sad nor pitiable. Fraser gives Charlie gravitas and strength as well as a certain effervescence, unencumbered by the weighty prosthetic suit and makeup, as seen in one scene where the character exudes a playful giddiness when taking a new wheelchair for a spin.

‘Stranger Things’: Sadie Sink and Caleb McLaughlin break down that emotional finale

Chau brings an infectious suffer-no-fools attitude to Liz, and Sink, so stellar in the latest season of “ Stranger Things ,” is amazing as Ellie. While she’s initially manipulative and insulting to Charlie – her mother even calls her “evil” – Sink impressively crafts her arc to slowly peel away that angry, angsty facade and give us a glimpse of the hurt girl underneath.

“The Whale” is an exquisitely soulful tale that avoids forgettable sentimentality. In one of the movie’s key scenes, Charlie says “People are amazing,” which could seem dubious, especially if you’ve spent five minutes on the Internet. Yet Fraser’s bighearted triumph makes you believe it might actually be true.

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The Whale review: Brendan Fraser shines in a overwrought, underbaked drama

The actor is better than director Darren Aronfosky's stagey adaptation.

In every awards season, there are certain movies whose heat index seems to rise almost solely because of a central performance: actors so indelible in the part they transcend the flaws and missteps of the film formed around them. (Renée Zellweger in Judy was one a few years ago, or Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody ; both won Oscars.) Brendan Fraser 's astonishing turn in The Whale often feels like that to the n th degree: a tender, modest, and momentously human piece of work plonked in the midst of a drama so masochistically stilted and stagey it often feels less like a movie than an endurance test, or even worse, a parody.

The staginess, to be fair, is at least partly because it was in fact a play, one that director Darren Aronofsky spent the last decade trying to bring to the screen (the playwright, Samuel D. Hunter, also penned the adaptation). Why the man who helmed Black Swan , The Wrestler , and Requiem for a Dream would find a bleak psychological drama about deeply broken people appealing is not a mystery; what he found irresistible here though, is less easy to see. Fraser's Charlie, in the opening scene, is just a voice inside a black Zoom screen. That's because he teaches remotely at an online college, but his excuse of a broken laptop camera is a lie: The truth is he's morbidly obese, so large that he can't leave his shabby apartment or even stand up without a walker. He can just about manage to bathe and feed himself, but other activities (masturbation, laughing) leave him too clammy and winded to breathe.

There's a gadget for nearly every physical thing he can't do on his own — handles and pulleys in the shower, a special seat in the bathroom, even a little clawed picker-upper for whatever he might drop on the floor. And a friend named Liz ( Watchmen 's Hong Chau ) comes faithfully every day to check his vitals and bring him groceries. Liz is also a nurse, and she keeps telling him plainly that he's dying. But she's often interrupted by a knock at the door: First an earnest young missionary (Ty Simpkins) named Thomas hoping to spread the good word, and later, Ellie ( Stranger Things ' Sadie Sink), his estranged teenage daughter whose only words for him, primarily, are sneered f-bombs. Ellie, hissing and venomous, hates him because he left her mother ( Samantha Morton ) years ago for another man, but mainly she hates everything.

Aside from a single brief flashback, the action, such as it is, is confined entirely to Charlie's drab apartment and the small roundelay of guests who steadily come through to drop chunks of story exposition or settle scores. Fraser — encased in elaborate prosthetics that Aronfosky revels in shooting like a Caravaggio, all shadows and moody, milky light — welcomes them, down to the missionary kid. Charlie knows that he's killing himself and he knows why, but there's hardly any complaint or self-pity; instead he's emotionally generous almost to a fault, a man still eager to spread his love of Walt Whitman and Moby Dick and only connect, even if his efforts are met with mockery or disgust.

He and Chau, who brings a bright acidity and affection to Liz, often seem to be drawing from a different well than their castmates. But all the actors are left to mine their own layers in characters who have only the scantest backstories and broad traits: Hellish Teenager, Troubled Soul, Man Too Big to Live. Those dynamics may have played out better on stage, where a certain kind of bold underlining serves a live audience. Here it often feels clumsy and maddeningly inconsistent, stranding Fraser in a melodrama undeserving of his lovely, unshowy performance. Whatever he wins for The Whale — and early prizes have already come — he deserves. The rest is just chum. Grade: C

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The Whale Review

A deeply emotional glimpse at a troubled man confronting his own white whale..

The Whale releases in theaters on Dec. 9, 2022.

I’m fat. There’s no getting around that. So, unsurprisingly, The Whale – a story about an overweight man – had potential to be a deeply personal film for me. Writing about it, even more so. What I wasn’t expecting was just how personal.

The Whale tells the story of Charlie (Brendan Fraser) – a 600lb man with increasingly complex health issues and a life full of regret. I may not be 600lb but I can sure relate to that last part. Like I said, I’m fat. Much like Charlie, “I was always big, I just let it get out of control.” Charlie’s life spirals following the death of his partner. For me, it was after getting divorced. But the results were similar – comfort food quickly became a few pounds, a stone or two. Then you look back and wonder how the hell you got there.

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We don’t see that with Charlie – just the end result, his bloated, 600lb-frame a testament to the devastation his life has wrought upon him. Director Darren Aronofsky paints a grim portrait of poor Charlie. He’s a reclusive English teacher who’s cut himself off from the world. He’s so embarrassed by himself that he keeps his webcam switched off while delivering his college courses. I did exactly the same when I began studying one.

That’s why Fraser’s performance hits so hard for me – the sheer authenticity of it. I’ve been there, I get it. I know exactly what it’s like to give up on yourself. I notice the look in his eyes, the guilt when he reaches for another chocolate bar, the anger, and rage, and self-destruction on his face when he gorges himself on another binge. For me, it’s one of the most authentic performances I’ve ever seen on film.

Which is Darren Aronofsky’s best film to date?

It's a heavy and emotionally draining performance, too. Charlie is dying – a victim of his own eating, while he clings fanatically to an essay about Moby Dick every time he’s close to his last breath. But Charlie is more than just a fat, dying man. He’s a father, a friend, a grieving lover.

The complexity of Charlie is a testament to the incredible script by Samuel D. Hunter, who also wrote the play on which the film is based. It’s deftly handled by both Aronofsky and Fraser, with a subtlety and grace you won’t expect from beneath a 600lb body mass. And that’s exactly the point.

There’s been some controversy over the decision to put Fraser in a body suit, given the fact that Charlie is portrayed as grotesquely, morbidly obese. But by exaggerating Charlie’s proportions, it allows Aronofsky to hit us even harder with an important truth: Charlie is as human as the rest of us. Much like Walt Whitman in his poem, Song of Myself, Fraser explodes the self, giving us a humane and harrowing glimpse into Charlie’s complex life that most will avoid looking for in the first place.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a fat person portrayed so honestly, and that unflinching authenticity – the good, the bad, the warts and all – makes The Whale important and hugely necessary. In fact, Charlie isn’t made out to be a victim – he’s done some questionable things, too. He’s merely human. Aronofsky gets that point across with poetic beauty.

Charlie’s physical appearance is designed to shock, with some astonishing makeup and prosthetics used to bring Fraser up to that 600lb body mass. There’s an element of sensationalism when you’re faced with Charlie’s naked, showering body, for instance. By exaggerating Charlie to grotesque proportions, it hits even harder when we begin to uncover the anguish that pushed him there.

If Fraser’s performance is at the heart of The Whale then Sadie Sink, who plays his daughter, Ellie, is the soul. The anger bubbling up inside her is a counterpoint to Fraser’s sadness – two ways of coping with tragedy that oppose and clash. Sink brings a phenomenal performance, too, overshadowed only by the brilliance of Fraser in what might be the defining role of his career. Their dynamic brought a tear to my eye more than once.

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Of course, she is Charlie’s white whale – repairing his relationship with her is all-consuming. It’s another element of his personality that comes to light through a mix of incredible performances and subtle direction… not to mention orchestral hits mimicking whale song in an eerie, emotional nod to the story of Moby Dick.

The utter brilliance of The Whale is this: it’s not just about Charlie. It’s about you. How you interact with the film – what you get from it – is what’s important. Aronofsky forces us to face our own prejudices in a subtle way, reassessing how we see Charlie at every step.

The Whale is truly one of the most emotional voyages you’ll take in a theater. A gut-wrenching, tear-jerking story is topped only by Fraser’s performance – a career-defining role that’s surely a contender for Oscars glory. Sink brings a staggeringly off-kilter performance as Ellie, while the whole thing is expertly guided by Aronofsky at the rudder. Hunter charts a course through unfamiliar waters, forcing us to face some uncomfortable truths. Fat people are people, too. Good or bad or everything in between. The Whale shows its 600lb protagonist with a humanity that has long been missing from Hollywood.

The Whale forces us to face some uncomfortable truths, not just concerning its grotesquely proportioned protagonist, but about ourselves, too. Much of its power comes from breaking down the barrier between the audience and the film’s subject, forcing us to accept that there’s a human being beneath the fat. A powerhouse performance from Brendan Fraser explores every facet of the deeply complex man, while Sadie Sink digs deep for a quirky role that keeps you guessing. A sharp script is delivered with slow brutality by Darren Aronofsky who gets to the heart of what it means to be Charlie. The Whale isn’t just a great film – it’s an important one, too, delving into our own humanity with the dogged relentlessness of Ahab himself.

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Inside Darren Aronofsky’s messy movie The Whale is something wise about religious trauma

The Whale is more than the movie where Brendan Fraser wears a fat suit.

by Alissa Wilkinson

It’s no wonder Darren Aronofsky wanted to adapt The Whale , Samuel D. Hunter’s 2012 play, for the big screen. It feels like it originated in the same brain that made Noah , The Wrestler, and Mother! : a story about regret and redemption, probing the spirit-body connection and drawing on biblical and literary myth.

So he got Hunter to write the screenplay and Brendan Fraser, who’s long been out of the public eye, to star. Fraser delivers a brilliant, gutting performance as Charlie, an online college professor who, out of great grief, has developed an eating disorder that has left him immobilized. He can’t leave his home; he can barely leave the couch, and he keeps the camera off when he teaches, afraid of his students’ gaze.

Charlie lost his partner Alan some years ago, and as The Whale progresses, we slowly realize his grief response of binge-eating is an inversion of the eating disorder that killed Alan. His late partner’s sister Liz (Hong Chau) is his closest friend, stopping by his apartment every day to check on him and bring him groceries. She works at a hospital, so she checks his slowly deteriorating health as well, and by the time the movie starts he’s showing clear signs of congestive heart failure. He’ll be dead by the end of the week if he doesn’t seek medical attention, and that’s the one thing he refuses to do.

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At the start of the film, a young missionary named Thomas (Ty Simpkins) knocks on Charlie’s door, wishing to evangelize Charlie, who kindly informs him that he knows the Bible inside and out. He’s not the only unexpected guest: Soon, Ellie (Sadie Sink) shows up, to Charlie’s great surprise; she’s his teenage daughter, sullen and rebellious and about to be kicked out of school, and he hasn’t really seen her since he and her mother split up years earlier. Her arrival seems like a moment of redemption. Charlie feels he’s messed up everything in his life, but maybe now, in his final days, he can do something right, and save himself.

The Whale is set in a very specific place: Moscow, Idaho, a city whose significance might not hit everyone the same way. Set along the state’s northern border with Washington, it’s a home both to a sizable population of Mormons and to a burgeoning movement of Christian Reconstructionists , an evangelical movement that embraces the idea, in essence, that biblical law ought to be the law of modern America. If you’ve been in conservative Christian circles, you’ve likely heard of the ringleader, Douglas Wilson, pastor of a church in Moscow, most recently famous for being blurbed on the back cover of a book about Christian nationalism published by the right-wing site Gab.

All that’s worth noting because Hunter (with, presumably, Aronofsky’s input) has updated his Obama-era play to be set during the 2016 GOP presidential primaries in Idaho. (In the background, on Charlie’s TV, we can hear Ted Cruz winning over Donald Trump by a sizable margin.) The characters don’t engage in explicit political commentary, but Hunter made another key update — changing the young missionary Thomas from Mormon to evangelical, a member of what sounds like a fairly typical congregation in town called New Life. That church and its teachings, we’re meant to understand, are part of (or perhaps the cause of) a bigger apocalyptic moment in American history.

That’s the backdrop of The Whale , but the real apocalypse is happening at Charlie’s house, at least if we take “apocalypse” to mean a moment of revelation. We know — everyone knows — that these are the last days of Charlie’s life. It’s raining continually outside, like a flood is coming. Charlie is obsessed with an essay he keeps reading about Moby-Dick , an apocalyptic book if there ever was one, about a man with an obsession and a death wish. There’s an atmosphere of dread, both of what’s about to happen in Charlie’s house and what’s going on beyond its walls.

As a story, The Whale is compelling. As a film, The Whale is a tad shakier. First there’s the obvious problem of putting Charlie, whose body size is viewed with repulsion by many of the film’s characters, on screen to be looked at in a culture beholden to rampant fatphobia that tends to denigrate human dignity. The distinction between a person whose body is large and a person whose body is large and failing because they’re trying to end their own life is lost on many people, and undoubtedly those people will be in the audience. The peculiar vitriol reserved for the latter, out of proportion to all kinds of other ways to harm oneself, is a pestilence, and that’s not even counting the belief that it’s okay to judge and comment upon another person’s body shape.

Worse, there are times when it’s not clear the filmmakers know the difference, particularly a sequence in which Charlie’s binging behavior is rendered with the distinctive air of a monster movie. You can’t control an audience’s reaction to a character, but you can steer it, and The Whale doesn’t always do the work. And there are some other issues, too: The score feels manipulative at times, and Sink’s performance feels curiously one-note, overwrought and hysterical, particularly next to Fraser.

This is what The Whale gets exactly right: the ways that fundamentalist religion and other legalistic cultures teach adherents to hate those whose bodies don’t fit a prescribed mold — especially themselves

Yet there is more to The Whale , which is also genuinely moving. Following the movie’s Toronto Film Festival premiere, Hunter spoke about how, growing up as a gay kid in Moscow, Idaho, he turned to food to self-medicate the loathing he learned to feel for himself, and experienced some of what Charlie experiences. This is what The Whale gets exactly right: the ways that fundamentalist religion and other legalistic cultures teach adherents to hate those whose bodies don’t fit a prescribed mold — especially themselves. That can manifest in many ways, but a common one is eating disorders, which look different on different people and garner a range of reactions, but come from the same place. I grew up in a very conservative evangelical community. I experienced this judgment too. It is visceral and real and deadly.

The other matter The Whale understands keenly is that our response to this pressure is simply to try to save one another, or ourselves. Charlie laments that he couldn’t save Alan. Liz wants to save Charlie. Ellie wants saving both desperately and not at all. And Thomas has salvation mixed up in his head: by trying to force salvation on Charlie, he’s trying to save himself. It’s Liz who finally recognizes that nobody can save anyone — that trying to do so may mean you stop seeing them as human.

Which suggests that the whale of the title may also have something to do with the story of Jonah in the Bible who, in a famous Sunday school story, ended up in the belly of one. After God asked him to preach to a city of wicked people, Nineveh, he ran away rather than minister to them, only to find himself inside the giant creature. When he escaped, yielded, and finally made it to Nineveh, he discovered that the people listened and repented. Infuriated, he yelled at God for showing mercy; God more or less told him to shut up and let God decide who gets saved. It’s none of his business. His job is to live.

And in its enigmatic ending, I think, The Whale suggests the same. We try to save one another, and we fail, because we cannot help but fail. Every one of us fails. But something in the world is still powered on the energy of the love we try to have. At the end, that might be what matters most.

The Whale premiered at the Venice Film Festival and played at the Toronto International Film Festival. It opens in theaters on December 9, 2022.

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Compassionate, mature look at living with severe obesity.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Thoughtful dialogue and discussions around love, l

Charlie is a smart, positive-thinking man who does

Movie approaches Charlie's experiences with obesit

Dialogue describing a horrible death (a bloated bo

A character masturbates, with his hand underneath

Language includes "f--k," "bulls--t," "s--t," "a--

Various snack foods and sodas on display: Pepsi, 3

Teen vaping and smoking pot. A main character smok

Parents need to know that The Whale is a drama about a man (Brendan Fraser) who's living with severe obesity and trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Sadie Sink). Directed by Darren Aronofsky, it's a compassionate movie with mature, complex themes. Violence is described in dialogue, and there's…

Positive Messages

Thoughtful dialogue and discussions around love, literature, truth, and faith. Movie is also about dangers of pre-judging people. Promotes compassion.

Positive Role Models

Charlie is a smart, positive-thinking man who does everything he can to support his daughter, but he also has some major weaknesses. He lies to his students and keeps a big secret from his best friend, one that ends up hurting her. And he's forever apologizing for things, revealing a lack of confidence. In one sequence, after hearing bad news, he binge-eats and vomits. Liz, a nurse and Charlie's best friend, is selfless in her devotion to him, though she's often frustrated by him and sometimes even teases him. Some characters say cruel things about someone being overweight.

Diverse Representations

Movie approaches Charlie's experiences with obesity from a sympathetic place. He's also gay and mourning the loss of his true love. But the movie frames fatness -- and queerness -- as something shocking that needs to be "humanized" in the first place. Another major character is a strong, complex Asian woman (Vietnamese actor Hong Chau). Charlie's daughter, Ellie, is very smart, although she's also quite difficult and likes to make trouble; her mother is also a smart, three-dimensional woman. A South Asian supporting character shows kindness to Charlie. The only other character is Thomas, a White male missionary. Cruel language about a person being fat is heard.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Dialogue describing a horrible death (a bloated body washes up on shore, etc.). Main character frequently in pain. Main character chokes on food. Binge-eating and vomiting. Violent dialogue about death, stabbing, rape, etc.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A character masturbates, with his hand underneath sweatpants. A pornographic video plays on a laptop, with one person kissing and thrusting behind another. (No graphic nudity shown.) Charlie is shown shirtless in the shower. Strong sex-related dialogue.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language includes "f--k," "bulls--t," "s--t," "a--hole," "f--got," "retarded," "goddamn," "bitch," "hell," "idiot," "shut up," "stupid," "penis," "oh my God." "Jesus" and "oh Christ" as exclamations.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Various snack foods and sodas on display: Pepsi, 3 Musketeers chocolate bar, Dr. Pepper, etc. Mentions of Walmart.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Teen vaping and smoking pot. A main character smokes cigarettes regularly. Dialogue about teen smoking too much pot. Character drugged with Ambien. Dialogue about someone who drinks frequently. Dialogue about college students drinking alcohol.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Whale is a drama about a man ( Brendan Fraser ) who's living with severe obesity and trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter ( Sadie Sink ). Directed by Darren Aronofsky , it's a compassionate movie with mature, complex themes. Violence is described in dialogue, and there's some unsettling imagery of things like binge-eating, vomiting, choking, etc. A man is shown masturbating (his hand is down his pants) and watching a pornographic video (one person kisses and thrusts behind another). The main character is also seen shirtless in the shower, and there's some strong sex-related dialogue. Language includes several uses of "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," and more. Teens smoke pot and vape, a character is drugged with Ambien, and there's dialogue about smoking too much pot and drinking too much alcohol. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (6)
• Kids say (7)

Based on 6 parent reviews

Not worth it. Don’t understand why it’s getting awards

“the truth will set you free “, what's the story.

In THE WHALE, Charlie ( Brendan Fraser ) teaches English classes online while living with severe obesity. He pretends that his laptop camera is broken so that his students can't see him. He never leaves his apartment, ordering all of his food delivered and getting occasional visits and care from his friend Liz ( Hong Chau ), a nurse. When Charlie learns that his blood pressure is potentially lethally high, he refuses to go to the hospital, instead devoting his energy to reconnecting with his brilliant, estranged, and deeply troubled teen daughter, Ellie ( Sadie Sink ). Meanwhile, a young missionary, Thomas (Ty Simpkins), happens upon Charlie and decides that he wants to help save his soul.

Is It Any Good?

Like Darren Aronofsky 's other movies, this dark drama doesn't shy away from the realities of its main character's situation, but what lingers are its deep wells of compassion. The Whale launches with Charlie's masturbation being interrupted by crippling chest pains. This initially casts him in a pathetic light, but as the story progresses over the course of a week, viewers begin to see who Charlie really is: loving, intelligent, sensitive, and an undying optimist.

Fraser's work is unfailingly powerful, Charlie's bright eyes consistently gleaming with hope. Playing opposite him, Chau is equally brilliant. The screenplay by Samuel D. Hunter, adapted from his own play, is filled with discussions about love, literature, truth, and faith (Aronofsky has grappled with themes of faith in much of his work, especially Noah and Mother! ). Aronofsky's direction is skilled but not showy, closer to The Wrestler than his other movies and focused mainly on character and performance. The movie flows beautifully, even if it sometimes feels a little stage-bound and cutesy. (For a recluse, Charlie is never without someone to talk to.) Overall, it's a movie that twists preconceptions.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Whale 's depiction of body image . How do you think the filmmakers intend you to see Charlie? What message is the movie saying about judging others?

Why is it so important to Charlie for people to "write the truth"?

Did you notice positive diverse representations in the film? Are stereotypes used, or avoided?

How are drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol depicted? Are they glamorized? Are there consequences? Why is that important?

How does the movie promote compassion ? Why is that an important character strength?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 9, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : February 21, 2023
• Cast : Brendan Fraser , Hong Chau , Sadie Sink
• Director : Darren Aronofsky
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Asian actors
• Studio : A24
• Genre : Drama
• Character Strengths : Compassion
• Run time : 117 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language, some drug use and sexual content
• Last updated : July 15, 2024

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The Whale review: Brendan Fraser comeback is grossly manipulative to an effective degree

The star of ‘the mummy’, covered in layers of prosthetics, is sad-eyed and awards-friendly, article bookmarked.

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First seen masturbating as he watches online porn, Charlie ( Brendan Fraser ), the main character in The Whale , isn’t just morbidly obese; he is a lumbering leviathan of a man, so immensely fat that he can barely manoeuvre himself off his couch, let alone leave his apartment. He sweats profusely, vomits into dustbins and almost chokes on the junk food he gorges himself on. “Who would want me to be part of their life?” he asks plaintively toward the end of the film. Even his daughter calls him disgusting. Darren Aronofsky’s film is stagy and mawkish. Watching it you feel grossly manipulated, but the approach is undeniably effective.

Fraser was the star of films like The Mummy and George of the Jungle in the days when he was a more conventionally shaped leading man. Now, covered in layers of prosthetics, he gives one of those sad-eyed performances, like a dog with an injured paw begging for a bone, that many audiences will find very hard to resist. He’s already received an Oscar nod for Best Actor.

Charlie makes a living by giving online English literature tutorials. He lies to his students that the camera on his laptop is broken so he doesn’t have to reveal himself in his full grotesquerie. As the film progresses, we gradually discover why he has allowed himself to grow so monstrously out of shape. Just under a decade before, he walked out on his marriage, abandoning his then eight-year-old daughter to take up with a student called Alan with whom he had fallen in love. Alan is now dead. Charlie is eaten up with guilt. He is also suffering congestive heart failure which could kill him at any time.

The film is based on a play by Samuel D Hunter. Aronofsky does little to open up his source material for the screen; the entire story takes place in Charlie’s apartment. In its lighter moments, The Whale is disconcertingly reminiscent of American family sitcoms full of eccentric relatives and friends who bicker incessantly but love each other really . Various characters turn up at Charlie’s door. One regular visitor Liz, (Hong Chau), a sharp-tongued but affectionate woman who has a demanding job yet still tends to his medical needs and keeps him in food.

Also continually re-appearing is Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a hapless young missionary from a cult-like religious group, who wants to save the fat man’s soul. Then, most important to Charlie, there is his estranged daughter, Ellie ( Stranger Things ’ Sadie Sink), now 17 and in danger of flunking out of high school. She wants him to help her with her school essays but doesn’t hide her contempt for him. Her mother (Samantha Morton) doesn’t know she is there.

Physical drama comes whenever Charlie tries to move a few steps across his apartment, or to go to the bathroom. The slightest exertion exhausts him. In spite of his decrepitude, he is a sweet natured and optimistic character with an engaging sense of humour. The title of the film refers not just to his shape, but to an essay written by a disgruntled kid, dissing Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick . He knows the essay by heart and regards it as his favourite piece of writing.

Aronofsky goes so far out of his way to portray Charlie in the early scenes as a repulsive bum that it’s inevitable the character’s better qualities will soon emerge. Fraser retains the genial qualities which made him so popular with audiences in mainstream 1990s movies. He demands honesty from his students but there’s nothing cynical about him.

The pathos is laid on very thick. At times, you wonder why a filmmaker as sophisticated as Aronofsky is resorting to such manipulative tactics. Beneath all its blubber, though, this turns out to be a film with a very big heart.

Dir: Darren Aronofsky. Starring: Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton. 15, 117 mins.

‘The Whale’ is in cinemas from 3 February

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Deadpool and Wolverine: Strong Reactions to Early 30-Minute Preview Get Shared Online

Early reviews for the opening parts of Marvel Studios' Deadpool and Wolverine are generating strong buzz ahead of its theatrical debut.

Coming with a massive cast of characters , Deadpool and Wolverine marks the MCU's first X-Men -centric solo film behind Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool and Hugh Jackman's Wolverine .

Insiders have heard reports of the MCU threequel being "really good" after learning of multiple reviews from test screenings , potentially setting up a film that could usher the franchise back into prominence.

Strong Reviews of Deadpool and Wolverine Footage Shared by Fans

After screenings of the first ~37 minutes of Marvel Studios' Deadpool and Wolverine in Berlin, Germany, and Shanghai, China, and London, Great Britain, critics shared strong, positive reactions to the footage they saw on X (formerly Twitter).

@hzjoe03 found it difficult "to find any negatives" about the footage he saw, teasing that fans are in for "a straight-up continuation from Deadpool 2 story and tone-wise:"

"I WATCHED THE FIRST 35 MINUTES OF 'DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE!' (No spoilers) No joke, I’m struggling to find any negatives. Despite the Fox merger, this feels like a straight-up continuation from 'Deadpool 2' story and tone-wise. Nothing has been toned back, all the comedy hit, and the action was beautiful. Saw lots of you had a problem with the color grading in trailers, but on screen it’s so much better and the suits are absolutely gorgeous."

He went on to note that "a majority of the footage" from the film's trailers "happens in the first 30 minutes or so." On top of that, attendees saw a short bit of footage not seen in trailers yet, which he called "insane" in all caps:

"The trailers haven’t given much away at all, a majority of the footage you’ve seen happens in the first 30 mins or so and even then, a lot of that 30 minutes were things I didn’t expect at all. They also showed us a snippet of things not in the trailer and it looks INSANE! Begging you to stay away from spoilers for the next two weeks because this movie might blow your mind. If the full movie is as good as the footage I saw, then this is easily gonna be one of my favorite Marvel films and definitely the best of the 'Deadpool' trilogy!"

"The excitement levels" for Looper's Nick Staniforth "have just gone through the roof" after seeing the threequel's opening, leading him to plead to see the rest of the action:

"I’m never one to say 'you’re not ready,' but you really aren’t ready. The excitement levels for 'Deadpool and Wolverine' have just gone through the roof. The first 30 minutes prove that Wade and the Wolverine are cutting loose in the best way possible. Gimme the whole film."

London Critics member Katie Smith-Wong saw enough from the first 37 minutes to tell her "this movie is going to be...epic:"

"It may have been a 37-minute peek but it's enough to tell me that this movie is going to be &:!-£:@“# epic! Can’t wait to see the whole thing!"

Hassan Hamid admitted to "hating on this film" ahead of its debut but was "grinning the whole entire time" during his screening, not wanting it to end:

"As someone who was HATING on this film before its release I just have to say… THIS ABSOLUTELY FUCKING RULED MY GOD I WAS THERE GRINNING THE WHOLE ENTIRE TIME I WISH WE COULDA WATCHED THE FULL THING I NEVER WANTED IT TO END"

@Nacht_Silver made it clear that he is not sure "if the ENTIRE movie is good" but said the footage that he saw was good, leaving him and the audience "satisfied:"

"Before people come at me I only saw the first 37-40m. I don't know if the ENTIRE movie is good or nah. From the stuff which i saw, it was good. The audience & me included were satisfied. We even clapped at the end But YOU can have in 2 weeks a total different opinion than me"

He shared a second post anticipating blowback for his response to the footage before saying director Shawn Levy "actually got that sauce," leaving him in awe of what he saw:

"The timeline might cook me for that but Shawn Levy actually got that sauce oh my god. I am in disbelief"

@whenbatmenfly specifically highlighted the "cool opening credits" and called the movie "pretty fun:"

"I just watched the special footage of 'Deadpool & Wolverine.' Pretty fun, cool opening credits. I will make a spoilery post later."

Cinema Bravo teased a "gritty yet groovy opening scene," noting how Marvel delivers "in-your-face humor, action-packed sequences, and eye-popping visuals:"

"We were invited to an early footage screening of 'Deadpool and Wolverine' and here's our initial reaction. 'Deadpool & Wolverine' 'Just wow! From the gritty yet groovy opening scene to the nail-biting montage of what's to come, Marvel Studios' latest offering overflows with in-your-face humor, action-packed sequences, and eye-popping visuals. While its R-16 rating might be too soft or too strong for some, the dynamic pairing of Deadpool and Wolverine is a special treat for fans and casual viewers alike, offering a fresh and fierce twist amidst the usual superhero flicks.'"

Other reviews shared reactions to the footage that touched on more spoiler-filled specific moments from the first 40 minutes.

Warning - the next section includes minor reported spoilers from Deadpool and Wolverine .

Some of the footage included an unspecified moment between Logan and the Hulk , letting them share the big screen together for the very first time.

There are also multiple Logan Variants seen (per MaxBlizz ) along with the Deadpool Corps, which comes after fans saw promotional images of characters like Headpool and Kidpool.

In terms of other references, Disney and 20th Century Fox are both thrown on the chopping block for jokes at their expense.

@RayyanTCG reiterated the previously mentioned fact that the trailers have only used footage from the first 40 minutes, leaving most of its record-breaking 127-minute runtime a mystery.

Will Deadpool and Wolverine Be the MCU's Next Big Success?

After 2023 saw The Marvels become the MCU's biggest financial flop to date (on top of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania underperforming), these reviews for Deadpool and Wolverine are encouraging.

Particularly with it being the MCU's first-ever R-rated movie , the expectations for the franchise to return to prominence appear astronomical ahead of its debut.

The hype also only continues to grow for the film, as Variety reported the first Deadpool and Wolverine teaser broke the record for the most-viewed trailer in history in February with 365 million views.

In June, Deadline then reported that early box office projections for its opening weekend were in the range of $200 million worldwide. Numbers on that level have not been seen since 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home , which topped Avengers: Infinity War and grossed more than $260 million in its opening weekend worldwide.

On top of the cameos already confirmed for Deadpool and Wolverine ( including at least five past X-Men villains ), the threequel feels like the event movie fans have wanted for a long time.

The film is also rumored to be one of Marvel Studios' three most important movies for the MCU's future (along with Avengers 5 and Avengers: Secret Wars ).

Taking all that into consideration, expectations should only continue to rise for what the threequel can do upon its debut.

Deadpool and Wolverine will slash its way into theaters on Friday, July 26.

Read more about Deadpool and Wolverine below:

Deadpool and Wolverine Popcorn Buckets: Where to Buy & When They'll Release

Ryan Reynolds Confirms 6 Chilling Facts About Deadpool 3 Villain Cassandra Nova

Deadpool 3's Alioth Cameo Explained: Loki Connection Revealed

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Hattie Wiener, Sex-Positive ‘Oldest Cougar,’ Dies at 88

She was an evangelist for older women having sex with younger men, and the health benefits that she said came with it.

By Penelope Green

Hattie Wiener, an ebullient and bawdy former dancer and therapist who found a measure of celebrity in her 70s for sleeping with younger men and promoting what she said were the anti-aging benefits of her lifestyle, died on June 21 at her home in Manhattan. She was 88.

She had been diagnosed with diastolic heart failure, and chose to end her life by refusing food and liquids, said her daughter, Rama Dunayevich.

Tabloids called her the Tinder Granny and the Oldest Cougar in the World, titles she was proud to claim. Ms. Wiener had long been an evangelist for older women having sex with younger men — a practice she began when she divorced in 1984, when she was 48 — and for the health benefits she felt accrued to those who followed her bedtime regimen, activities she promoted in a self-published book, “Sex and the Single Senior” (2009).

But it wasn’t until she was featured in “Strange Sex,” a 2010 documentary series on TLC, that she began to enjoy a sort of B-list fame, appearing as a reliably naughty guest on television shows like “Access Hollywood” and “Dr. Phil.”

“I realized that by sleeping with young men,” she said in “Strange Sex,” “I’m starting my life over again, because my husband was a young man and we had wonderful sex and now I’m repeating the pattern, but not with my husband or anyone his age.”

In that series, TLC filmed her date with an affable electrician and single father of three named Ron who was 40 years her junior. Ms. Wiener dressed with typical flair, in a studded dog collar, a black minidress and a gold bolero jacket; Ron looked like he was dressed for a barbecue. But he was a kindly date, and noted that he was fond of older women because of their confidence and because, as he put it, “They’re not looking for the happy ever after.”

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