★ ★ ★ ½ ☆
Far from neglecting the trappings of either monumental
blockbuster or dry satirical comedy, Colossal
wears its bizarre premise proudly on its sleeve. Largely, it’s all the
better for it. Anne Hathaway plays Gloria, an alcoholic who is kicked out by her
boyfriend, Tim (a fantastically clipped Dan Stevens), and heads back to her old
hometown. Waking from a particularly rough night, Gloria turns on the TV to
find a giant monster has trampled over the city of Seoul. But that’s not the
weirdest discovery: after watching the creature for several days, Gloria
realises it’s imitating her drunken movements as she wanders through the small
town’s playground, even performing her unique nervous tic.
There are many things I really like about this bizarre
curiosity of a film, even the bits that don’t quite gel. I love that it almost
evades marketing in any way. Oh, the poster’s rather great (and will probably
adorn a rather snazzy steelbook someday), but watching the trailers try to
effectively echo its offbeat combination of crowd-pleaser and arthouse oddity
is almost as fun as watching the film itself. I also love that director Nacho Vigalondo
gets Jason Sudeikis to play against type so deceptively. He’s playing a
childhood friend of Gloria’s, Oscar, who offers her a job at his bar and tries
to help her get back on her feet. On a surface level that might not seem much
of a stretch, but the role grows into something far different by the third act.
I’m not sure I totally bought what
that role becomes, but it certainly adds spice and allows for some great glaring
between he and Hathaway.
The whole film has a blindfolded taste test feeling that
brought me back to watching student previews during my early uni years, such as
The Double, Frank, or Life After Beth. These were films that
offered not only a break from packed multiplexes
and sweaty club nights, but an anticipation that comes only from something
deliberately different. ‘Anne Hathaway is a kaiju’ now rests alongside ‘Jesse
Eisenberg has a clone’ and ‘Michael Fassbender has a papier mâché
head’ in my personal canon of ‘Strange Premise, Stranger Film’.
And Colossal is
strange. At times delivered as mumblecore drama, at others improv comedy, the
film demonstrates remarkable reservation with its monster stomping. The rules
of Gloria’s connection with the creature are established without contrived
exposition, it’s something that we discover with the characters, and there’s no
better guide than Hathaway. I’ve sorely missed her on-screen since Interstellar (I never caught The Intern, nor Alice Through the Looking Glass), and the wait has been more than
worthwhile. I’m honestly not sure who else could carry the film through its few
misjudged moments, or make me believe in a character who can show remorse for people
thousands of miles away but seems incapable of calling her boyfriend back to
say sorry.
It would be relatively easy for Colossal to thrive purely on Hathaway and Sudeikis’ grimacing or its
water cooler premise alone, but it’s got far more to offer than that. The
monster’s appearances, perpendicular to Gloria’s struggles with alcoholism, can
be read in any number of ways. Whether it’s the not-so-subtle comment on
self-destruction, what our idiocy does to people we’ll never even meet, or the
somewhat deeper allusions to power as a corruptive force. One could even read
the film as a comment on (stick with me here) what America does and doesn’t
contribute cinematically to the rest of the world. Indie films (like the drama
inhabited by Hathaway, Sudeikis and Stevens) rarely make it across the border, with
US cinema represented abroad only by Hollywood behemoths (like the rampaging monster
swatting helicopters from the air).
These themes do get a little lost amongst the clatter of the
climax, but previous exploration of them was so restrained that I forgave it. I’m
unsure whether these final moments exist purely keep mainstream audiences in
their seats, but as a gentle nudge into summer tentpole season, it worked. Colossal should be appraised for
refusing to skimp on shiny spectacle, but never letting it blind a genuine harmony
of digital bombast and dramatic buoyancy.
