The Whale

Charlie [is] played brilliantly by Brendan Fraser...

There’s nothing consciously sinister about THE WHALE’s use of Charlie’s eating disorder (the original play was, in fact, written from experience), but Aronofsky’s adaptation is cruel, not just to Charlie’s character, but to all of them.

It’s such a heavy-handed approach that The Whale’s extremity risks alienating the audience from the intention.

Its redeeming strength [is] the authentically knotty characters and the performances that inhabit them.

The Whale is a moving, enveloping film that, while it very rarely departs from its stage origins, reaches the heights of emotional drama.

The pace is so repetitive, and Charlie’s small cast of visitors keep bursting through the front door so regularly, that his sitting room comes to resemble a bus depot at peak hour.

If I were to describe this film in one word, it would be melancholy; it is practically flawless, at least in my opinion, and conveys the notion that people are inherently kind...

If you didn’t know that The Whale was based on a play, you’d work it out pretty quickly... The immediate distance that this initially creates soon evaporates, however, in no small part thanks to Fraser’s all-in performance.

If it’s as sincere as it purports to be, this is one of the worst movies of recent years, and if it’s not — which is almost preferable — then it’s a landmark exercise in trolling.

A morbidly obese man racked with self-loathing makes a desperate eleventh-hour attempt to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter in the overstuffed but worthwhile drama, The Whale.