Darren Aronofsky is a writer/director I admire. I like his instinct to go big, transcendental, and weird with movies like The Fountain and even Noah (which I didn’t particularly like but found fascinating). But he also give us more down-to-earth films like The Wrestler… and now The Whale. I’m very much inclined to like whatever he puts out.

The Whale stars Brendan Fraser playing a man with morbid obesity, trapped in his body and his apartment by his massive girth. He can barely move without a walker, his blood pressure is skyrocketing, and his in-home nurse is pretty sure he’s going to die by the end of the week. Into his life circulates three or four people who interact with him and each other as he spirals further and further into double-decker pizza slices and self-destruction.

This is a very well written character who is performed artfully by Fraser in a metric ton of fat suit. The character could just be a bundle of clichés overly mirthful, cynical and hateful, or just gross. Fraser plays him as an optimist who has learned to be a realist. He has no illusions about what he’s turned himself into, yet he still sees the good in people. I genuinely liked him even through it was difficult to watch him wheeze and gasp his way through his small apartment.

I think some of us can identify with this character’s morbid obesity even if we, ourselves, are not in his exact situation. Realizing our body is betraying us, perhaps due to our own mistakes and miscalculations, perhaps due to genetics, age, or happenstance. We become prisoners of our own body’s cage. This film gets that and portrays it honestly… even if there might be some leering ick to the camera’s unblinking gaze.

But the movie isn’t all about Fraser. I was genuinely impressed by the circle of friends, family, and do-gooders that surround him. They aren’t stuck in an endless series of conversations with him, but will have genuine interactions with each other. Long dialog sequences that are usually interesting or fascinating as we dig deeper into their lives.

Unfortunately, I wished the movie had the courage to have a different ending. The way it ends is predictable and I’d have loved them to pull something else off. On top of that though, the final big revelatory moments are meant to be transcendent but came across cheesy and eye-rolling to me. Especially as the subtext of Moby Dick becomes not just text, but hypertext… it was like they were worried we couldn’t figure out what all this means even though it was obvious from the first introduction of the classic novel.

On top of that, Fraser’s character’s eye-popping amazement at some pretty pedestrian writing just didn’t work for me. If you’re going to tell me something is genius, you had better pull it off… or keep it off-screen since I came away from these penultimate reveals thinking… is this guy dumber than the script thinks he is?

So while I really dug the majority of this film, enjoyed all the performances, and admired the writing – up to a point – the movie takes a nose dive in its final glaring moments. I like what they were trying to do, but I hated how they did it. Good movie otherwise.

Score: 87