Look, we know you’re all here to watch the trailer for Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, which A24 dropped on Tuesday morning (and may be the single shortest “trailer” not given the moniker of “teaser” that we’ve ever seen) and we don’t want to be massive bummers about it and spoil the party. Still, in the interest of transparency, we’ll say that we weren’t the world’s biggest fans of it when we saw it at TIFF. We’ll summarize our conclusions before moving on in about as a concise manner as we can manage: Brendan Fraser’s excellent in this movie, and it is a shame that it’s not better. But you know what’s an underrated Brendan Fraser comedy? Airheads. Seriously, go back and watch that movie — it holds up really well, and will make you long for the glory days of radio stations and goofy-ass hair metal. Hell, even Lemmy has an amazing cameo. It’s just like a tableau of what we’ve lost in the intervening years since those halcyon days of… 1994.
Peep it:
So, here’s something funny: what do you do for a movie that is partially inspired by and heavily references Herman Melville’s Moby Dick? Well, if you’re A24, you write the shortest possible synopsis that you can. It’s a fitting tribute to how far we’ve come in terms of terse communication in the last hundred-and-fifty-odd years, we guess:
“From Darren Aronofsky comes The Whale, the story of a reclusive English teacher who attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter. Starring Brendan Fraser and based on the acclaimed play by Samuel D. Hunter.“
The Whale will begin its long voyage to a theater near you on December 9. We highly recommend stocking up on whatever nihilist tombs inspired Nic Pizzolato’s characterization of Rust Cohle in that first season of True Detective before checking this one out. You’re gonna want to inoculate yourself from the bleakness here.