Colossal
         
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Year: 2016
Rating: 7.0
This film came and went faster than a walk around the block. It made all of $4 million and went I expect to a solitary lonely life on cable. It deserved better. It is one of the strangest films you could ever hope for. And in its eccentric why not way, rather brilliant. With a premise as ridiculous as this one, it is a surprise at how satisfying it is. If the outlines of this were not written by the Spanish director/writer Nacho Vigalondo when he was ten years old while playing with his monster toys, I would be surprised. A few things about the film surprised me - first that this director with so little experience in Hollywood was able to get this gig and some good actors as well, second that they actually went to Seoul to shoot some of the scenes and third that Anne Hathaway is in a frigging Kaiju movie! A Kaiju and Giant Robot film! How cool is that. Yet, this passed practically unnoticed by the geek community.

 

These days for reasons that I am not aware of Anne Hathaway seems to get a lot of on-line hate - but doesn't everyone eventually - but I think she is fine - even though they give her a dreadful hairdo in this one - like a dead shaggy rat is covering her head. She went from Interstellar and The Intern to a Kaiju movie with an unknown director. Very nifty. Along with her is a non-comedic performance from Jason Sudeikis and Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens who I am always surprised when I come across him and he is not the perfect English gentleman of means. The film throws you a real curve when it swerves from Kaiju to something much more menacing that comes out of nowhere like a rabbit punch. The film completely bombed which is why I guess I had never heard of it till I saw a DVD of it here in Thailand and figured why not for $3.

 

Seeing Sudeikis in this after his gig as Ted Lasso is especially interesting and jarring. The dark psycho side of Ted Lasso. Hathaway plays Gloria, an alcoholic party girl who lost her job and has grabbed onto a relationship with Tim (Stevens) for security and a place to stay. He has had enough of her staying out all night in a drunken daze and kicks her out of his apartment. Understandable but kind of shitty too. He is a bit of a controlling prick. She goes back to her old parent's home that is empty and soon runs into an old childhood friend, Oscar (Sudeikis) who owns a bar. He is small town nice willing to help her with things for her home. Gives her a job. No one could be nicer. Then suddenly on TV she sees that a giant monster has shown up in Seoul and destroys a few buildings before it vanishes. How strange she thinks.

 

It happens again the next day and she realizes that the monster mimics exactly what she has done in the nearby park at 8:05 in the morning. She tests it the next day and sure enough, the monster does exactly what she does. She shows it to Oscar and his two drinking buddies. Big mistake. Oscar goes into a very dark place and becomes obsessed with her. Sudeikis is great in doing the switch to creepy, scary and manipulative - because he is the Giant Robot now. The reason for this is the stuff of a script that just had to make up something to explain it. The film takes on a lot - abusive relationships, alcoholism, drifting lives, small town monotony and monsters - the human and the Kaiju kind.