Plaintive in example sentence
"The Fly," like "The Phantom of the Opera" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," shows us a monster who is reduced to a grotesque (and in the case of Brundle, inhuman) appearance, while still endowed with the bare instincts of love, morality, and fear; under increasingly heavy makeup, Goldblum retains his trademark sardonic wit, but it connects with a plaintive sorrow that is truly affecting.