What to Eat? What to Watch? 

Should we walk two blocks to our local eatery, Boheme Bistro, where Adel treats us like celebrities, and enjoy some great Lebanese food? Or walk half a block farther, to Burger Fi, for juicy cheeseburgers by the sea? Or… maybe we should stay home and watch a movie?

Those were the questions last Sunday evening. And since G, K’s sister, was our guest, we let her decide. She opted for staying home. Very happy with that decision, I brought trays and silverware and napkins into the TV room, and searched for a few Oscar-nominated movies to choose from.

Twenty minutes later, we were having fresh salad, cacio e pepe pasta, and a big bottle of well-balanced merlot. The choice of movie was The Whale, which, as I’m sure you know, is about a 600-pound man that deals with depression by eating himself to death.

The Whale, starring a fat-suited Brendan Fraser, is worth watching. It was tightly scripted and very well acted (earning Fraser his first-ever Oscar nomination). But there were things I didn’t like about it.

It was much more a stage play than it was a film. And not just a stage play, but one that was restricted to a single room. Filmed plays can sometimes be well done, but I’ve never seen one that wouldn’t have been better on stage.

The subject matter was important. And, for the most part, it was treated with the seriousness it deserved. That is to say, the film attempted to deal with the issues at stake in a reasonably balanced way.

But when it came to the secondary plot – the effort of the protagonist to encourage his students to write better essays – it failed miserably. Instead of an inspired argument for good writing, the audience gets a threadbare Hollywood cliché about expressing your passions.

Ugh!

Anyway, I didn’t hate it. And the pasta and wine (Prisoner) was fantastic!