Brendan Fraser ruled the box office in the late 90s and early 2000s. He was one of the highest-paid actors and one of the most popular amongst the audiences of the time. Perhaps his biggest success was The Mummy franchise, the epic fantasy that brought us back to ancient Egypt and that consecrated Fraser as one of the most popular faces of the industry.
Now, after years outside the spotlight, Brendan Fraser is having a massive comeback with the drama movie The Whale. Directed by Darren Aronofsky, the film got excellent reviews at the Venice Film Festival, where Fraser received a 6-minute standing ovation. So, if, like us, you’re all caught up by the Fraser hurricane, here are five movies that are not The Mummy, and that definitely marked the childhood of millions of millennials.
Bedazzled
In this 2000 film, Brendan Fraser plays the part of Elliot, a young man that works in a call center and is very much in love with a co-worker to whom he is afraid to confess his true feelings. The devil, played by Elizabeth Hurley, grants him seven wishes that lead him to live in different situations: from being a Colombian criminal to being the president of the United States.
Airheads
It is the jewel of an entire rock-loving generation, at a time when the great wave of pop music that ended up flooding everything was on its way. Brendan Fraser is Chazz Darby, the lead singer of a grunge band called Lone Rangers, which also includes a very young Adam Sandler and Steve Buscemi. After being rejected several times, they hijack a radio station to play their music.
The hilarious story has a more than memorable soundtrack with songs from bands like White Zombie, 4 Non-Blondes, Primus, Anthrax, and Motorhead with Ice-T and Whitfield Crane. Extra points because there is a sublime cameo by Lemmy Kilmister, leader of Motorhead.
George of the Jungle
Many of us saw this movie in our earliest childhood, and that’s where we learned about Brendan Fraser (and witnessed countless crotch-punching jokes). A parody that is much better than Tarzan:
Encino Man
Encino Man is one of those TV classics we all watched in childhood and will live in our hearts forever. Brendan is a young caveman who remained frozen for millennia. A couple of teenagers find him and take him to high school (where they pass him off as an exchange student), teach him how to skateboard rock, and California cool.
Critics trashed this movie, but fans loved it. Encino Man is one of the undisputed references of the 90s, and Link is one of the characters Fraser is most associated with to this day.
The Whale
The film just premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was such a success that Brendan cried at the standing ovation he received. It is about a professor who weighs over 500 pounds and seeks to hide from the world for that reason, in addition to recovering his relationship with his teenage daughter, played by Sadie Sink.
Story originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva