Review of 'Colossal'

colossal.jpg Gloria (Anne Hathaway) is an alcoholic whose relationship has just ended so returns to her home town to figure things out. She quickly resumes a friendship with a childhood friend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) who owns a local bar and soon offers her a job. News reports out of Seoul, South Korea, regularly show a giant monster destroying the city. It soon becomes apparent that Gloria (!) is controlling the monster on it's rampages as she walks through the sandpit in a local park. As the death toll of her activities mount she has to figure out what she is going to do and when Oscar begins to show his darker side things come to a head.

Yeah. Odd. Hathaway puts on a fairly uninspired and unconvincing performance as a drunk put into a somewhat impossible situation. The situation is, of course, completely absurd but what could have been the material for a comedy is altogether much darker and distasteful. The effects are, as they should be, cheesy and completely over the top as an obvious nod to the classic Godzilla films. There are little in the way of laughs and the deaths of the citizens in Seoul is treated incredibly lightly (yeah, yeah, it is an absurdist film anyway, I get that, but the way the deaths of people they consider perhaps too far away to matter I found quite grating and, frankly, insulting).

Initially the premise “Colossal” sounds intriguing but ultimately the film is disappointing and disturbing. One for cultists only I feel…those with low standards.

Rating: “Not great, but not the worse”

Review Date: 2017-09-15


Directed by: Nacho Vigalondo

Studio: Toy Fight Productions

Year: 2016

Length: 109 minutes

Genre: Science Fiction

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4680182/