1 out of 5

Directed by: Alrick Riley

Yeesh.  Take the most mediocre film devices you can imagine and then remove any compelling characters or an involving plot.  Yay, there’s ‘The Whale!’  Enjoy!

Intended to tell the story of the whaleship Essex, the tragic voyage of which inspired Moby Dick, our entry into the narrative is via cabin boy Tom Nickerson, played with emptiness by Charles Furness.  I get it – he’s green, but wants to see the world, so his general lack of expression is meant to blend that sense of fear and bravery.  But there’s just not enough emotion in Furnace’s presentation to bring that across, and the script doesn’t provide him with much to do to allow him to show that… especially since this is being voice-over explained to us by older Tom, played by Martin Sheen, who’s telling all of this to someone off-screen in a classic bullshit framing mechanic that seriously proves to have no reason at all to exist.  Except that maybe you get to have a name attached to the movie.  Meh.

So the ship sets out with Jonas Armstrong as the brutal first mate Owen Chase and Adam Rayner as the diminutive Captain George Pollard.  The two have several stand-offs of Who’s the Boss, Chase constantly doubting his Captain’s understanding of the ship’s and crew’s needs and Cappy just sorta’ pissed that he has to repeat his orders.  Grumble grumble, Chase should be Captain, but frankly we’re not given much evidence of either being all that great except for at completely fulfilling their character stereotypes.  Again, I can blame the actors for not giving the roles too much to care about, but the script and camera and director generally just put them there and have them say this.  It feels stupidly functional, and the Essex never felt like a working ship, nor did the environment ever sell the feeling of isolation that becomes important later on.

Obviously there’s a meaty story here, of shipwreck, of cannibalism, of survival, but since none of the characters have any weight and ‘The Whale’ completely skips over an opportunity to give us some procedural day-to-day grounding in what being a whaler meant, that ‘meaty’ story just feels like a time sink, not even an effective distraction – we don’t care about our people, thus don’t care about what happens to them, and dodgy effects suck out any sense of grandeur.  There’s almost some inertia when our crew gets covered in the blood of the day’s slaughter (this being produced by Animal Planet, I was waiting for some good ol’ meat is murder guilt to be slathered on), but again: nothing.  Yes, the easy thing would’ve been to express remorse over the kill, but there’s less than that… they just let it sit there, some artsy shots of red, and then whatever.  Yeesh.

So, ‘Whale’: thanks.