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The Whale — Movie Review

KJ Proulx's Reviews
2 min readDec 22, 2022

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by KJ Proulx

Brendan Fraser in ‘The Whale’ [Credit: A24]

Whether you’re talking about George of the Jungle, The Mummy, or even Airheads, Brendan Fraser has always been a likeable on-screen talent. Due to many personal things throughout his life, he hasn’t been around much, but I’m very happy he is making a strong return to acting. The Whale is his latest release and while I wouldn’t exactly say the film itself is incredible, his performance is and it’s actually so good that it almost made me just say, “screw it, this is the best film of the year.” I didn’t quite get there after thinking about it, but here’s why this film is more than worth seeing for the performance alone.

Being severely obese after a lifetime of wrong choices and hardships, Charlie (Brendan Fraser) is in his final days and trying to continue his job as an online English teacher. The premise of this film aside from that is the fact that he hasn’t seen his daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) in many years and would like to reconnect with her. Ellie is a troubled teenager and wants nothing to do with her father, as he abandoned her and her mother. The reasoning behind that had me in tears by the end of the film, but I won’t ruin that here. The relationship between the two of them is absolutely heartbreaking, but it worked really well.

It was nice to see Ty Simpkins return to acting here as well and Hong Chau as Liz was great too. Her…

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KJ Proulx's Reviews
KJ Proulx's Reviews

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