Amanda's Picks

THE WHALE 

A highlight of this year’s awards season was watching Brendan Fraser, star of The Mummy and George of the Jungle, win big for his comeback role in The Whale. You couldn’t help but be moved by his emotional speeches even if like most people, you hadn’t seen the movie.

I finally did see The Whale on demand this weekend, and have to agree with most critics that Fraser is great, but the film, not so much.

Fraser plays Charlie, a morbidly obese man who refuses to seek medical care even though he knows he’s dying of heart disease. The Whale is based on a play by Samuel D. Hunter and the film feels like a play, as it takes place entirely in Charlie’s house. He’s visited by his loyal friend and nurse Liz, a door-to-door missionary, and eventually and his estranged 17-year-old daughter, Ellie.

At first, you’ll spend a lot of time staring at Fraser and marveling at the magic of the Oscar-winning movie make-up and prosthetics that transform his appearance. It takes everything for Charlie to move from the couch to the kitchen or bathroom. He lumbers. He wheezes. His friend and nurse Liz (Hong Chau) begs him to go to the hospital or he will die but he refuses to go. Charlie is a bit of a martyr.

We learn that Charlie left his wife and child to be with the man he loved, whose death, it is implied, led to Charlie’s eating disorder. In an effort to make things right, Charlie reaches out to Ellie after many years. What he gets is an angry, mean-spirited, snarky, teenager who as a bonus is flunking out of school. And boy is she mad at Dad! Charlie promises that he will rewrite her essays to keep her from failing, and give her money if she keeps visiting.

But The Whale isn’t about an annoying girl who hates her dad and everyone else on the planet. It’s about watching Brendan Fraser inhabit and maneuver this enormous body, which is fascinating and a bit creepy at the same time. It’s difficult to watch Charlie eat, like he is battling his food, and to watch him use a pulley to get out of bed. Every move is difficult, deliberate and potentially dangerous. But thanks to Fraser, it’s believable.

Charlie’s only goal is to set things right with his daughter, who he insists is amazing. But the only thing she’s amazing at is scowling, stomping and brooding. Deeper in the movie we learn more about their history, and we learn about Charlie’s partner, but it was tough for me to feel bad for Charlie or Ellie. I did feel for Liz, and for Charlie’s ex-wife (the always great Samantha Morton) who arrives later in the movie for a moving scene and validation that Ellie is “evil.”

Fraser deserves all the praise and prizes he received for The Whale, as does Chau who was nominated for an Oscar and is the most authentic character in the movie. Too bad The Whale isn’t as good as they are.

The Whale: 2 out of 5 Satrs

In 2016’s musical drama La La Land, Director Damian Chazelle exquisitely captured modern day Hollywood and took home the Best Director Oscar. So, the studio handed him an $80 million budget, creative control and a stellar cast to do the same with 1920’s Hollywood. But in this case, bigger is definitely not better.

Babylon flopped big-time and is available on Paramount+. It follows the trajectory of several characters who may or may not be based on actual film legends. Margot Robbie plays brash silent starlet Nellie LaRoy (maybe Clara Bow). Brad Pitt is hard-drinking, oft-married fading movie idol Jack Conrad (maybe John Gilbert). Diego Calva is Manny, your standard ambitious new guy who works his way to the top.

The movie name-drops real Hollywood legends like Irving Thalberg, Mabel Normand and Gary Cooper and an early scene depicts the Fatty Arbuckle scandal. I give Chazelle credit for including the difficulties faced by minorities in Hollywood. I just wish that Li Jun Li as the cool and sophisticated Lady Fay Zhu (maybe Anna May Wong) and Jovan Adepo as Sydney Palmer, a talented Black musician, had more screen time.

The characters are potentially compelling but with nobody to keep Chazelle in check, Babylon constantly runs off the rails. There is so much screaming, swearing, running and releasing of body fluids that the story gets lost. And in an extraordinarily bold and questionable move, Chazelle throws in the song “Singin’ in the Rain” reminding us of a movie that told the story about Hollywood in the time of talkies so much better, and Babylon ends with multiple clips from that classic movie. Ouch.

Babylon is an ambitious, showy, chaotic, sprawling film with moments of brilliance, especially a montage at the very end, a fabulous soundtrack and eye-popping production values, but ultimately, it’s a chaotic, overlong, noisy mess. Give me Singin’ in the Rain any day.

Babylon: 2 out of 5 Stars