WORTH THE WEIGHT? (THE WHALE)

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It's easy to see why people are getting so riled about 'The Whale'.

Darren Aronofsky is one of those directors who always seems to make in your face movies that are about as subtle as a breeze block.

However 'The Whale' takes that to a whole new level.

It takes a play about a sensitive issue - morbid obesity - and turns it into a movie that just smacks of awards clickbait.

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And in that regard it has succeedex, with its star Brendan Fraser winning Best Actor at the Critics Choice and Screen Actors Guild awards and engaging in a tight three way battle for the Oscar with Austin Butler and Colin Farrell.

Based on the 2012 play of the same name by Samuel D Hunter, Fraser plays Charlie, a reclusive, morbidly obese English lecturer who is believed to have only a week to live.

At the start of Aronofsky's movie, Charlie is giving an online creative writing tutorial to college students via Zoom but keeps his webcam switched off, still pretending it is broken.

After the lesson, he is watching gay porn and masturbating when Ty Simpkins' Thomas bangs on his front door and enters his living room.

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Perilously close to inducing a cardiac arrest, Charlie gets Thomas to read him an essay about Herman Melville's 'Miby Dick' to calm him down.

Asking him why he has turned up on his door, Thomas tells Charlie he is a missionary from the New Life Church who is spreading the word of God from door to door.

However he is soon ushered out of the house by Charlie's carer, Hong Chau's nurse Liz who not only tends to her friend's medical needs but buys him groceries while he remains cooped up in the house struggling with his mobility.

Liz's pleads with him yo go to the hospital for treatment but ignores her request.

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But as the film unfolds, we learn Charlie has also reached out to his estranged, angry teenage daughter Sadie Sink's Ellie who he offers to help with her essays for high school.

Ellie's mum, Samantha Morton's Mary has kept her out of his life ever since he left them when the child was eight to embark on another relationship with a man.

That man turns out to have been Liz's brother.

And when Thomas returns to apparently convert Charlie, it is also revealed that Liz has family connections to the New Church mission and blames them for her brother's suicide which has also driven her patient to morbid obesity.

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Aronofsky and Hunter keep several plates spinning throughout the movie as truths are revealed about the various characters.

But is 'The Whale' worthy of all the awards buzz it has received over the past three months?

In many ways, 'The Whale' is a typical Aronofsky film - visceral, physical, uncompromising fare that is not afraid to repulse its viewers.

However it's a movie that really struggles to shake off the rigid straitjacket of its theatrical origins.

'The Whale' feels like a televised version of a play and, therefore, feels quite flat.

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As for the performances, Fraser, Chau, Simpkins, Sink and Morton show a lot of commitment to their roles.

Fraser, in particular, dons prosthetics and a fat suit to convey the physical challenges faced by his character.

However 'The Whale' is very much a Marmite film.

It inevitably sharply divides audiences - some of whom will lap up the histrionics and think it is an acting triumph and others who find it gratuitous, insulting, distasteful nonsense.

If you haven't discerned this already, I fall into the latter camp.

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Aronofsky overdoes the "isn't he repulsive?" shots of Charlie's body to the point where the shots seem like fat shaming.

Yet his and Fraser's attempts to counteract that with moments when Charlie's emotional fragility are on display also smack of clumsy audience manipulation.

Worst of all, Aronofsky struggles to overcome the limitations of shooting his film just in one room, meaning the movie really feels as fake as a studio based TV play.

What the film does is to remind you what a superb job Lenny Abrahamson and his cinematographer Danny Cohen did in their 2015 Oscar nominated adaptation of Emma Donoghue's 'Room'.

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Both operated in an even more confined space than Aronofsky and his cinematographer Matthew Libatique and yet they managed to somehow turn that set into something much more cinematic.

Unfortunately for Fraser, in particular, the theatricality of the film and the lack of spectacle means all the audience is left with is the wheezing, the grunting, the weeping and the heartfelt speeches.

And that just makes it appear like obvious Oscar baiting.

You can almost predict the clips that will be selected for screening during Academy Awards night for him and Best Supporting Actress nominee Chau.

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As the film reaches its inevitably overwrought climax, it completely loses its grip and worse still, the final scebes may induce derisory laughter among some viewers.

This isn't really fair on Fraser, in particular, who certainly gives his all in the main role.

Ultimately he is let down by a screenplay that sounds just too written and direction that lacks imagination.

Rather than really engage with its subject, Aronofsky prefers to wallow in the misery of a morbidly obese man crying while smothering pizza in mayo and then gorging on Cheeto sandwiches before spewing in a bin.

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'The Whale' is a film that lacks subtlety, sensitivity or any real compassion.

It just seems more concerned with pushing audience buttons - not for the first time in Aronofsky's career.

And that is shameful because an issue like morbid obesity deserves much better handling than this.

The other tragedy is watching Fraser's efforts to elevate the film prove so fruitless.

Try as he might, he is ultimately defeated by Hunter's gauche writing and Aronofsky's uninspiring, heavy handed direction which result in a film that lacks the requisite heart to be taken as seriously as it should have.

('The Whale' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on February 3, 2023)