In praise of Brendan Fraser: His top 6 films from ‘School Ties’ to ‘The Whale’

Everyone loves a comeback story.  Just look at Tiger Woods.  And Hollywood especially loves a good comeback such as Judy Garland with 1954’s “A Star is Born.” The latest Tinseltown comeback is none other than Brendan Fraser, who over the past 30 years starred in everything from lowbrow comedies (“Encino Man”) to action blockbusters ( “The Mummy”) to  acclaimed dramas (“Gods and Monsters,” “The Quiet Man”) and even a Best Picture Oscar winner (“Crash”).

But the 53-year-old actor has gone through a rough patch: a divorce including a well-publicized alimony issue in 2013, health issues, depression, the death of his mother and the 2018 revelation where he alleged, he had been sexually assaulted by the former head of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. in 2003. After stepping away for a while, Fraser has been slowly working his way back appearing in such TV series as Showtime’s “The Affair” and DC Universe and HBO Max series “Doom Patrol.”

The Fraser-sance movie comeback began last year with Steven Soderbergh’s 2021 HBO Max noir “No Sudden Move” and it’s in full flower this awards season with Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale,” which earned a six-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival that brought Fraser to tears.

Adapted by Samuel D. Hunter from his play,  “The Whale” finds Fraser playing a 600-pound reclusive English teacher man with a massive eating disorder who tries to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter (Sadie Sink).

The Toronto International Film Festival is also jumping on the Fraser bandwagon bestowing him Sept. 11 with TIFF Tribute Award for Performance for “The Whale.” Festival CEO Cameron Bailey stated: “Brendan Fraser gives a performance of staggering depth, power, and nuance in ‘The Whale.”’ Since its inception in 2019, the tribute award has been something of a bellwether for the Academy Award with three of the past recipients going on to win the Oscar: Jessica Chastain for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”; Anthony Hopkins for “The Father” and Joaquin Phoenix for “Joker.”

He will next be seen in the comedy “Brothers” and Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” He also played Firefly in the recently shelved “Batgirl.” If you want to revisit Fraser’s previous work, here are five movies to check out.

“School Ties” (1992)
After playing a thawed caveman earlier that year in “Encino Man,” Fraser got to show his dramatic chops in the Robert Mandel-directed exploration of anti-Semitism. Set in 1959, Fraser plays a working-class Jewish teenager who receives a football scholarship to a prestigious Catholic boys’ high school. Because his roommates and other classmates are anti-Semitics, Fraser’s David Greene decides to hide the fact he is Jewish. Though the drama received mixed reviews and lost money at the box office, Roger Ebert praised Fraser declaring he is “crucial to this movie’s success. His performance has to find a way between his character’s ambition and pride; he knows that this prep school is the only possible route for him between working-class Scranton and a scholarship to Harvard, and he doesn’t want to lose his chance. But at the expense of tradition? Their’s, or his?”  The film also features a young Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and Cole Hauser of “Yellowstone’ fame.

“Still Breathing”  (1997)
Fraser won the best actor at the Seattle International Film Festival for this indie playing a sweet hunk street musician named Fletcher from San Antonio who, after having a dream of a beautiful young woman (Joanna Going) living in Los Angeles , goes West  to find her. The L.A. Times Kevin Thomas wrote that Fraser is “physically imposing and has an acting range that encompasses the hilarious shenanigans of “George of the Jungle’ to the strong, unapologetically gay son of ‘The Twilight of the Golds,’ to Fletcher, an intelligent romantic. Fraser has that knack of seeming to inhabit his characters totally—and he has a sense of humor, a crucial ingredient for a good-looking star.”

“Gods and Monsters” (1998)
Haunting drama adapted and directed by Bill Condon about the last days of James Whale, the director of such classic horror films as 1931’s “Frankenstein” and 1935’s “The Bride of Frankenstein.” Ian McKellen earned an Oscar nomination as Whale, who by the late 1950s has been long retired and dealing with depression and physical frailties due to several strokes. He lives with his housemaid (Oscar-nominated Lynn Redgrave) who disapproves of the filmmaker’s gay lifestyle. Whale’s life changes when meets the young beefcake gardener (Fraser) who bonds with the elderly man while posing for the filmmaker’s sketches.

The L.A. Times’ Kenneth Turan wrote: “While his performance isn’t a rival to McKellen’s, Fraser, best known for comedy roles like ‘Encino Man’ and “George of the Jungle,” does a respectable job as the naïve, guileless Boone, who tells his suspicious romantic interest Betty (Lolita Davidovich) that he’s never ever met anyone like Mr. Whale.”

“The Mummy”  (1999)
Certainly, no rival for the 1932 classic horror film starring Boris Karloff in the title role, this slick, glossy action-adventure was a huge hit , spawning two ho-hum sequels, thanks to Fraser’s charm, dash, panache, mighty muscles and chemistry with his leading lady (Rachel Weisz). Reviews were decidedly mixed especially from the New York Times who at least had a modicum of praise for Fraser describing him as a “flaky chip off of Harrison Ford’s block. Easygoing and indestructible, he tosses off bluff cartoon-balloon quips while blithely hacking the limbs of the zombies hurling themselves at him with kamikaze like fury.”

“The Quiet American” (2002)
Though Fraser takes a back seat to Michael Caine’s Oscar-nominated performance in this lauded adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel, he more than holds his own opposite the veteran British actor. Set in Vietnam in 1952 near the end of the first Indochinese War when the French fought the Communist lead rebel force. Caine plays a British journalist and Fraser is the title character, a young idealist who supposedly is an aid worker-of course, he’s CIA. And they both find themselves in love with the same beautiful Vietnamese woman.

Ebert noted that though he has often starred as a “walking cartoon” in such films a “George of the Jungle,” Fraser has shown “in other pictures, like ‘Gods and Monsters,’ that he is a gifted actor and here he finds just the right balance between confidence and blindness: What he does is evil, but he is convinced it is good.”

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