Now streaming on Hulu
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis
Gloria (Anne Hathaway) gets dumped and evicted by her boyfriend (Dan Stevens) after too many alcohol-fueled all-nighters, so she returns to her childhood home and reconnects with her old friend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis). Sounds pretty simple, right? Also, there’s a kaiju attack on South Korea that she finds out she is unwillingly controlling. Yep.
It’s a darkly funny movie, with the leads giving excellent performances. Hathaway is magnetic as Gloria, who is a well-meaning trainwreck. She’s a trainwreck because she never takes an active role in her life; it’s her friends that keep her out late, fueling her alcoholism. As she discovers her connection to the kaiju attack, she realizes she needs to take control. After years of dealing with whatever mountain of consequences she brings on herself with her drunken escapades, the lives of strangers in Seoul are too high a price. It seems like a simple metaphor for alcoholism in that it takes the realization of how you affect others to truly wake you up, but it works thanks to the lighter tone of the film and Hathaway’s performance.
What makes Colossal more complex and interesting is Oscar. While Gloria went to New York, Oscar stayed in their hometown, taking over his dad’s bar (where he gives Gloria a job). There’s obvious resentment there from the beginning. While he doesn’t exactly revel in Gloria’s situation, he lavishes her with gifts and a job, giving the New Yorker no choice but to rely a bit on the guy who couldn’t manage to get out. He’s friendly and charming, and the two initially resume their friendship nicely. Some complications naturally arise, but these complications don’t come from Gloria’s passiveness like usual, but instead her active approach to retaking control. Sudeikis is great in what turns out to be a rather complex role.
Remember, this is a comedy. There are some really funny scenes, like when Oscar decides to do the most irresponsible thing he could do in the bar. The kaiju scenes are funny, as is the public reaction to the kaiju – funny but also completely feasible. Tim Blake Nelson is in the cast as well, and he rarely fails to make anything he touches funnier.
Colossal starts as a breakup, put your life back together comedy. Then it turns into a monster kaiju movie. And then it turns into a genuine personal horror film. All while keeping its fairly light tone. It’s an impressive trick, a comedy which can explore themes like alcoholism, feelings of inadequacy, possessiveness, and the consequences of your actions, all with a backdrop of a monster rampaging through Seoul. It’s possible that it doesn’t delve deeply enough into the themes it touches on, to the point of not really having a clear enough message at times, but it certainly doesn’t do a poor job. The one theme Colossal does delve deep on – taking control and the natural blowback from those forces who want control instead, it handles really well. The tagline spells it out for you – “There’s a Monster in All of Us”. It’s genre-bending, entertaining and well-acted, and one of the better films of 2017 so far.