It's a shame Raymond Carver is not around to watch this. He once wrote: “Honey, no offence, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.” Nacho Vigalondo, the director/writer of this indie movie, hones in on venom with similar verve.
Gloria (Anne Hathaway) is a sophisticated hipster with time on her hands. She thinks. As far as her boyfriend’s concerned she’s a boozy loser whose chronic memory problems make intimacy impossible.
Forced to leave New York, Gloria slinks off to her childhood home (now empty) and almost immediately bumps into self-effacing old school friend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis). He runs a bar and, partly because she loves the retro back room (“It’s like something from a Wes Anderson movie!”), she agrees to wait tables. I bet you already have some idea of where this plot is going. Ha ha. You’re wrong!
What comes next involves 50ft monsters, Seoul, flashbacks and two rivals. To put it another way, a flap of Gloria’s arm causes mayhem in South Korea and various narrative strands connect in brain-frying ways. Some critics think Colossal would work better without the monsters. Which is like saying Being John Malkovich would work better without John Malkovich. Vigalondo, à la Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze, takes a nuts-and-bolts attitude to the bizarre. Whimsy, paradoxically, is what earths the drama.
Colossal, in pictures
Clearly it was made on a tight budget ($15 million, to be exact) but it’s not a problem. At first we mostly see the monsters on TVs, iPads, newspapers and mobile phones. By the time we get “up close”, we’re so emotionally connected to these big lugs that the rudimentary CGI can’t help but seem epic.
Meanwhile the fact that Gloria has so few possessions fits with the state she’s in. She’s a snob who’d rather have nothing than the old fogey-ish furniture Oscar attempts to loan her. Hathaway does a fine job of conveying Gloria’s flaws (several scenes in which she’s humiliated and/or physically assaulted brought tears to my eyes). And the supporting cast are cool (Austin Stowell as a pretty young barfly is spookily passive in just the right way). Still, Sudeikis is the revelation. If this rom-com favourite was a building, he’d be a comfy maisonette. He blows the roof off that image, an explosion that is the film’s most special effect.
