Anne Hathaway controls a kaiju in this mad monster mash-up.
Spanish director Nacho Vigalondo’s best films take genre tropes and subvert them in wholly original and unexpected ways. Timecrimes gave time travel a darkly sexual through-line, while Extraterrestrial turned a tale of alien invasion into an intimate three-hander. And Colossal might be his most audacious celluloid mash-up yet, taking the beats of a romantic comedy-drama and combining them with a crazy kaiju movie.
Anne Hathaway plays Gloria, an unemployed thirtysomething whose nights involve drinking herself into oblivion, and days revolve around the hangover that follows. Her boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens) has had enough, and so breaks up with her, kicking Gloria out of his apartment in the process.
With nowhere to go, Gloria heads back to the small town she grew up in, and moves into her empty family home to take stock and sort herself out. And it’s there she re-connects with bar owner Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) who still seems to hold a torch for her, and offers Gloria both friendship and a job.
And while working in a bar might not be the best place for someone with alcohol issues, she nevertheless forms a bond with Oscar and his late-night drinking buddies, played with cheeky good humour by Tim Blake Nelson and Austin Stowell.
Sudeikis and Hathaway in Colossal.
All of which anchors Colossal in classic Anne Hathaway rom-com territory. And then things get weird. Because at much the same time drunk Gloria stumbles through a playground late at night, a giant monster materializes from the sky in Seoul, wreaks havoc, and then disappears.
She watches those events unfold on the news the next day, and recognizes something familiar in the monster’s movements. For Gloria is somehow connected to the kaiju, the creature mirroring her playground activity so she’s literally controlling it. And then that the giant robot shows up.
It’s all pretty out there, requiring a serious suspension of disbelief, while Vigalondo’s script is somewhat vague on the rules of this crazy connection. But if you’re willing to go with the film’s twisted logic, it’s fun watching Hathaway throw herself so wholeheartedly into such a complex and downright strange role.
The monster is a reflection of Gloria’s personality, and the anxiety, depression, remorse and regret that comes with alcohol addiction. They say that drink destroys lives, and here that happens quite literally as her actions cause a kaiju to stomp on the people of Seoul. And the metaphor just about works.
Where the film is less strong is in the presentation of Jason Sudeikis’s Tim, the character undergoing such a sudden and dramatic personality change mid-way through proceedings that it simply doesn’t ring true. Sudeikis is a good actor, but he’s given an impossible task here, one that threatens to derail the movie in the final third.
But if you can cope with that outlandish premise and the odd jarring tonal shift, there’s lots to enjoy in Colossal, a monster movie that masterfully subverts the genre, and one that will actually make you think between the bouts of kaiju-on-robot action.
The Verdict
Colossal is quite unlike any creature feature you’ve ever seen, the monsters representing addiction, misogyny, self-loathing, depression and a bunch more issues you wouldn’t expect to find in such a genre flick. It isn’t always successful, but when the film works, it’s a blast – another completely original and unique genre mash-up from the mad mind of Nacho Vigalondo.
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