Brendan Fraser
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Sadie Sink
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Hong Chau
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Ty Simpkins
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Samantha Morton
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Sathya Sridharan
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Ryan Heinke
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Huck Milner
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Brendan Fraser | Sadie Sink | Hong Chau | |||
Ty Simpkins | Samantha Morton | Sathya Sridharan | |||
Ryan Heinke | Huck Milner |
Brendan Fraser | Sadie Sink | ||
Hong Chau | Ty Simpkins | ||
Samantha Morton | Sathya Sridharan | ||
Ryan Heinke | Huck Milner |
Writing instructor Charlie (Fraser) never seems to have his webcam enabled while teaching online. He makes excuses and is so good-natured that no one makes a fuss, but the real reason for his invisibility is his appearance. Charlie weighs 600 pounds. His obesity starts to pose a grave threat to his health and his friend Liz (Hong Chau, The Menu 2022), a nurse, begs him to check into a hospital, but also recognises that it might be more important to simply offer support.
Charlie’s current status quo is upended by the return of his long-estranged adolescent daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), though her willingness to resume a relationship seems prompted as much by Charlie’s offers to ghostwrite her school essays as it is by her sense of familial loyalty. Meanwhile, Charlie receives visits from a door-to-door evangelist (Ty Simpkins) who engages him in a dialogue about redemption that, despite Charlie’s lack of religious inclination, proves surprisingly resonant. Can any of these folks, regardless of their personal agendas, serve as the lifeline to self-acceptance that Charlie so urgently needs?
Screenwriter Samuel D. Hunter, here adapting his own play, has already proved himself a compassionate chronicler of offbeat characters with the FX series Baskets. With The Whale – the title a reference to Moby Dick, Charlie’s favourite book – Hunter has given us a story that fuses love, grief, and discomfort as a zigzag path to empathy.