ANNE HATHAWAY HAS MONSTROUSLY WEIRD WINNER IN ‘COLOSSAL’
New sci-fi comedy is a very different kind of monster movie
Colossal is as refreshingly different a monster movie as it is a clever, timely take on bullying, domestic abuse and toxic masculinity.
Anne Hathaway stars as a frequently drunk woman who, while nursing hangovers, discovers she can psychically control an alien-looking beast that’s stomping all over South Korea in Spanish writer/ director Nacho Vigalondo’s sci-fi comedy ( out of four; rated R; in theaters now in New York and Los Angeles, expands to 65 theaters nationwide Friday, including Denver, Chicago, Wash- ington, Atlanta and Austin). Col
ossal marks a dark and funny change of pace for Hathaway, though the movie struggles tonally with its central conceit of a woman desperately trying to find control of her life.
Rudderless, out of work and recently dumped by her exasperated boyfriend (Dan Stevens), Gloria (Hathaway) retreats to her working-class hometown to get her bearings. It’s rough going at first: Gloria knows she needs to shed her party-girl nature, but she retreats to her usual liquid vices when she runs into Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), a bar owner she knew when they were kids.
Gloria clears off the cobwebs enough to figure out her early mornings stumbling home coincide with a giant humanoid creature rampaging in Asia. Even crazier: When she stands or moves on a local playground, this Seoul-crushing thing mimics her dancing and head-scratching on the other side of the world, much to the amazement of Oscar and his bar buddies (Tim Blake Nelson and Austin Stowell).
Vigalondo ( Timecrimes) lovingly imagines his own version of a Japanese kaiju movie a la Godzilla and gives it an enjoyable
Ghostbusters vibe when the monsters appear (yes, more than one). Those scenes offer Colossal’s lighter moments, with Hathaway figuring out ways to explore this new supernatural gift without stepping on Korean onlookers.
Though she finds a way to maneuver in that otherworldly part of life, reality is trickier, and one of the townies uses Gloria’s monstrous alter ego to control her — and becomes a monster of sorts himself. The second half of the movie gets very serious and often uncomfortable, though it leads to a satisfying climax when Gloria figures out how to fight back.
Hathaway brings humor and pathos to her character’s arc from boozy trainwreck to some what-together woman, and one of the better aspects of Colossal is that Gloria maintains a certain relatability in being perfectly imperfect. Saturday Night Live veteran Sudeikis also finds a role here that lets him defy type, in just as dramatic a way as his role in last year’s civil rights drama Race.
What’s great about Colossal is that Vigalondo has crafted a monster-movie deconstruction that’s completely batty and at the same time extraordinarily intimate. The reveal of how Gloria has these abilities is downright Spielbergian, and the director cuts back and forth between epicscale scenes on one side of the world and two people about to engage in simple fisticuffs in the dirt on the other, with stakes high in both instances.
For such an oddball creature feature, Colossal packs a punch with sheer destruction as well as emotional power.
Director Vigalondo lovingly imagines his own version of a Japanese kaiju movie a la ‘Godzilla’ and gives it an enjoyable ‘Ghostbusters’ vibe.