Ken Kwapis set to trivialise real-world issues in EVERYBODY LOVES WHALES, starring Drew Barrymore and Kristen Bell

Ken Kwapis set to trivialise real-world issues in EVERYBODY LOVES WHALES, starring Drew Barrymore and Kristen Bell

Jun 23

Whales are freaking awesome. If you don’t believe me, you can get out right now. Go to Japan or Finland or something, because you’re not welcome here. Back 1988, three young Gray Whales found themselves trapped under ice, much to their distress. Within days, hundreds of media representatives descended on the small town of Barrow, Alaska, and the Gray Whale rescue efforts captured the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of people all over the world — including the President of the United States.

Even though only two of the whales made it out in the end (with the painfully ironic help of a Russian ice-breaker — Russian whaling accounts for a significant proportion of the world’s annual whale slaughter), you’d expect a movie based on these true events to take on a melodramatic, heart-warming tone. So why the hell is Ken Kwapis (The Sisterhood Of The Travelling Pants, License To Wed, He’s Just Not That Into You) in charge of the film adaptation?

Reading the synopsis, the whales seems like an afterthought, a plot device, rather than the most important part of the film:

Set in Cold War-era 1988, “Whales” tells the true story of a small-town news reporter (Krasinski) and a Greenpeace volunteer (Barrymore) who enlist the help of rival superpowers to save three majestic gray whales trapped under the ice of the Arctic Circle. Bell will play a reporter from Los Angeles aiming for the big time who thinks her greatest assets are her looks.

Er, okay, so it’s based on a non-fiction book. How is that described?

…This is the real story behind the remarkable, bizarre and often times uproarious event that for a fortnight mesmerized an anxious world.

So they’re turning a real-world turning point in the history of environmentalism into a fluffy romantic comedy, complete with John Krasinski, Drew Barrymore, and Kristen Bell? That’s ridiculous. You can guarantee that, in the time it took to free those two whales, hundreds more were killed by whaling fleets from Russia, Finland, Japan, etc. That’s the real issue here, not the pointless romantic entanglements of the puny humans involved in the event.

This makes me so angry I’m going to have to look at some whale pictures to calm me down again.

Ah, that’s better.

Relevant links: Contemporary news report of the whales’ predicament; outline of the non-fiction book’s contents.

Irrelevant link: Hilarious cover of Metallica’s “Trapped Under Ice,” with a half-decent Arnie impersonator on vocals.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering what Kristen Bell looks like in video game form, here she is in 2009′s face-stabbing assassinate-a-thon Assassin’s Creed 2 (in all her puffy-lipped bug-eyed glory):