Colossal dose of weirdness

DOESN’T MAKE SENSE: VIGALONDO MAY THINK IT’S INNOVATIVE BUT MISSES THAT TARGET

Main characters think they have become the human equivalents of horror-movie fiction.

One has to seriously question Anne Hathaway’s film choices. Why get involved with a rambling, moronic mess like Colossal. It simply doesn’t make sense.

Written and directed by the Spaniard Nacho Vigalondo, this ridiculous screen offering has Hathaway playing a bizarre, alcohol-driven Goth creature named Gloria. She gets obsessed with a TV news item featuring a humongous behemoth of a monster lizard, resembling Godzilla, which is terrorising Seoul, in South Korea. The UN has declared a world crisis and warns of world destruction.

The monster appeared once, 25 years ago, and disappeared as quickly as it arrived. But when Gloria returns to her northern New York hometown to live in her parents’ abandoned house, the monster starts to appear again on screen with increasing frequency. And it just so happens to pop up whenever she’s been out all night binge drinking with her childhood neighbour, Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), who owns a bar, and his townie friends (Tim Blake Nelson and Austin Stowell).

Godzilla continues to dominate TV screens and Gloria sympathises with the monster while drowning herself in vodka.

Oscar divides his time between beating up his customers (and occasionally Gloria) and strongly identifying with Godzilla’s new friend, a robot.

The production then takes a weird turn when these two troubled characters believe they are the real-life equivalents of Godzilla and the robot and their actions are duplicated on TV screens around the world.

When Godzilla and his new sidekick, a robot, develop a big international fan base, Gloria and Oscar

think they have become the human equivalents of horror-movie fiction. As the action builds, the demented Gloria heads for Korea to find her monster. Back home, Oscar has other ideas in the monster department.

Vigolondo may think he’s created something different and innovative, but he doesn’t quite carry it off satisfactorily.