If you go into "Colossal" expecting another " Pacific Rim" or " Kong: Skull Island," you will emerge less than two hours later puzzled or perhaps angry at what you just saw.
I'll just say that the cast is quietly superb, that the movie always knows what it is and what it wants to say. I don't want to say much more about the rest of the plot, because it takes surprising turns. My only minor complaint is that, even though it's short, it still feels a bit slight, its evident modesty notwithstanding.īut just when you think you've gotten everything that the premise can give you, "Colossal" takes things in a slightly different direction than you expected. There's a more multilayered and rich genre film somewhere in that notion, and I can imagine a filmmaker like Guillermo del Toro (" Pan's Labyrinth") or George Romero ("Dawn of the Dead") or John Carpenter ("They Live") dealing with it directly. My only major complaint-and I'm not sure it's even a valid one, considering that "Colossal" never seems that interested in addressing it-is that the movie has a political and racial dimension that it doesn't really explore because it's so focused on Gloria and her pals: it's a movie about comfortable Americans who project their personal turmoil on another culture without giving their wanton destructiveness a second thought. She also knows that unless she gets a handle on things, she going to keep re-enacting the same cycle until she's either dead or an old lady who lives in a tiny rented bedroom somewhere and spends most of her monthly Social Security check on booze. She's a user of both intoxicants and other people, and she knows it. She's clever enough and good looking enough to get other people, particularly men, to forgive her tendency to make messes and take advantage, but only up to a point. Vigalondo's screenplay and her acting do a terrific job of shaping Gloria as the kind of person you may have known, or perhaps been, at some point. Her performance has a Diane Keaton-ish quality. Hathaway is quite appealing here, striking the right note between desperation and "whatever, dude" haplessness. There is property damage and a body count on the other side of the world, and this gives Gloria an urgent reason to convince her friends that what she believes is happening is, in fact, happening, and take a long look at herself and urge her fellow barflies, who aren't exactly temperate individuals, to do the same. The film takes the characters' problems seriously, but it never becomes self-important. Part of the film's unique sense of humor comes from the way it plays against our expectation that Vigalondo is going to make things bigger at some point.
Imagine a relatively laid back, small-scaled indie comedy about a woman coming to terms with the mess she's made of her life, but with her demons represented by a kaiju that looks like something out of an older "Godzilla" movie. I should pause here and allow that to enjoy this film, you have to accept that it unfolds in a space somewhere between dream/allegory and realistic psychological comedy and that it's never going to treat the rampage as anything other than a representation of Gloria's problems. "Colossal" doesn't send Gloria on a time-wasting journey to figure out if there's any connection between her issues and the creature's rampage instead, it spends its energy asking what such a discovery might mean to Gloria personally and how it relates to her train wreck of a personal life. Gloria returns to her hometown in upstate New York, moves into the home that her parents vacated when they moved south after their retirement, and runs into a childhood friend named Oscar ( Jason Sudeikis), who owns a local bar, a perfect place to get a job if you're an alcoholic who doesn't have two nickels to rub together.Īfter a long night drinking at the bar with Oscar and his friends Joel ( Austin Stowell) and Garth (Tim Blake Nelson), she stumbles home and wakes up to hear that a gigantic creature has attacked Seoul. There will be no second chances this time: he already packed a suitcase for her. Dan breaks up with her and kicks her out. Gloria's boyfriend ( Dan Stevens) breaks up with her after she spends all night out with reprobate friends without notifying him.