Brendan’s Got a Belly

The Whale (Darren Aronofsky, 2023)

For a film dealing with themes like abandonment and redemption, The Whale (2023) is very much another self-destructive ouroboros tale we've come to expect from Darren Aronofosky.

Despite reminding me of that bloke inflating and exploding after seeing Lo Pan's corpse in Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Brendan Fraser is perfectly fine in the film. But, let's be honest, it's all about the novelty of seeing him in fat prosthetics and watching him slowly trundle about in his home, binge eating and trying to get to the bog in time.

The thing I find about most Hollywood dramas, is no matter how serious the subject matter might be, they tend to come across as woefully insincere and completely divorce me in taking them seriously. It's gotten to the point that whenever an actor participates in any kind of seriously dramatic role; especially one that involves an extreme physical metamorphosis, then I automatically assume they're just fishing for an Oscar. This is evidently apparent in the horribly telemarked and entirely cringeworthy  "I need to know" scene from the film; coming across as the obvious Oscar nominee showreel clip. Ultimately, these films end up backfiring with their heavy-handed clumsiness that they can often result in some unintentional comedy scenes and well deserved mockery from me. The Whale is no exception.

Highlights from The Whale which genuinely made me LOL were:

• A 600lb Brendan Fraser getting caught having a tommy tank while watching gay porn at the start of the film.
• Brendan almost dying from the aforementioned wank and ordering Ty Simpkins to read aloud his daughter's essay on Moby Dick; somehow it magically helps him. Apparently, this works better than being immediatley rushed to the nearest cardiac unit.
• Pleading for his nurse to give him his KFC bucket.
  
• Brendan's home nurse having to perform a wrestler slam on him to dislodge the sandwich that was asphyxiating him, on account of being too big for the Heimlich manoeuvre.
  
• The reprehensible daughter's cliched latent talent needing to be encouraged in order to set her on the right path.
• Dan, the way too sociable pizza delivery man, finally catching a glimpse of Brendan and looking absolutely disgusted.
• Brendan subsequently downing two pizzas, slapping ham and mayonnaise on them and making a doritos sandwich during his epic binge eating scene.
• Brendan Fraser finally revealing his face to his online students and that one girl in the zoom chat laughing.
  

Much like everything Aronofsky has done since Black Swan (2010), I doubt I'll ever bother seeing The Whale again.

Alternatively, why waste two hours of your life watching a gay man gorge his way to self-destruction when you can similarly watch mukbang celeb Nikocado Avocado tragically painting it more effectively in just a mere eleven seconds?