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What if Godzilla was a projection of your own personal problems and problems? In “Colossal,” a new film by Nacho Vigalondo, an alcoholic screwup named Gloria (Anne Hathaway) unleashes terror on Seoul, South Korea, in the form of a giant monster after getting blackout-drunk. That is the question posed by the film.
Although the premise of “Colossal” sounds like something out of a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that has been stretched to feature length, part of the strange charm of the film is its willingness to be that kind of movie to the nth degree. It warmly embraces the central idea and delves into it in depth without burdening it with a sense of gravity that it is unable to support. Vigalondo, who has carved out a niche for himself as a maker of wry, small-scaled, and rather peculiar genre films, does not operate in this manner. This film has the feel of someone waking up from an intense nightmare, decoding it, and realizing that it was rather unsubtly working through some of their unresolved problems, then bringing it to Judd Apatow and saying, “Here’s your next comedy,” which is exactly what it is.
The action of the story begins in New York City. Gloria’s boyfriend (Dan Stevens) breaks up with her after she spends the entire night out with a group of reprobate friends without informing him of her plans. Dan ends his relationship with her and kicks her out. Because he has already prepared a suitcase for her, there will be no second chances this time. It is Gloria’s return to her childhood home in upstate New York, where she moves into the house that her parents vacated when they moved south after their retirement, that she meets up with a childhood friend named Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), who owns the local bar and is looking for employees, which is the ideal place to find work for someone suffering from alcoholism and who doesn’t have two nickels to rub together.
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She returns home after a long night of drinking at the bar with Oscar and his friends Joel (Austin Stowell) and Garth (Tim Blake Nelson). She is awoken by the news that a gigantic creature has attacked Seoul. Colossal does not send Gloria on a time-consuming quest to determine if there is a link between the creature’s rampage and Gloria’s problems; instead, it spends its time asking what such a revelation might mean to Gloria personally and how it might relate to her train wreck of a personal life.
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In order to enjoy this film, you must accept that it unfolds in a space somewhere between dream/allegory and realistic psychological comedy, and that it will never treat Gloria’s rampage as anything other than a representation of Gloria’s problems. I should take a moment to acknowledge this. Visualize a relatively low-key, small-scaled indie comedy about a woman who is trying to come to terms with the mess she’s made of things in her life, but with her demons represented by a kaiju that looks like something out of a classic “Godzilla” film.
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A large part of the film’s distinct sense of humor comes from the way it plays against our expectations that Vigalondo will eventually escalate the situation to a larger scale. He never does anything. The film takes the problems of the characters seriously, but it never becomes self-important in the process. When property damage and a body count are reported in another country, Gloria has an urgent reason to convince her friends that what she believes is happening is actually happening, as well as to take a hard look at herself and urge her fellow barflies to do the same.
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It’s hard not to like Hathaway in this role, as she strikes the perfect balance between desperation and “whatever, dude” haplessness. Her performance has a distinct Diane Keaton quality to it. In Gloria, Vigalondo’s screenplay and her performance do an excellent job of creating a character that you might have known or even been yourself at some point in your life. To a certain extent, she is clever and attractive enough to persuade others, particularly men, to overlook her proclivity for making messes and taking advantage, but only to a certain extent. She is a substance abuser who also uses other people, and she is well aware of this. Moreover, she understands that unless she gets a handle on things, she will continue to re-enact the same cycle until she is either dead or a frail old lady who lives in a cramped rented room somewhere and spends the majority of her monthly Social Security check on booze.
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One major complaint I have about the film—and I’m not sure it’s even a valid one, considering that “Colossal” never seems to be interested in addressing it—is that it has an overtly political and racial dimension that isn’t explored because it is so focused on Gloria and her friends: it’s a movie about comfortable Americans who project their personal turmoil onto another culture without giving their wanton destructiveness a second thought. Somewhere in there is a more complex and rich genre film, and I can imagine a filmmaker like Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), George Romero (Dawn of the Dead), or John Carpenter (They Live) tackling it head-on. Although it is short, my only minor complaint is that, despite its obvious modesty, it still feels slightly understated despite its short length.
In the end, however, just when you think you’ve received everything that the premise has to offer, “Colossal” takes things in a direction that is slightly different from what you expected. I don’t want to give too much away about the rest of the story because it takes some unexpected twists and turns. I’ll just say that the cast is quietly excellent, and that the film always knows what it is and what it wants to say at any given time. If you go into “Colossal” expecting something along the lines of “Pacific Rim” or “Kong: Skull Island,” you will emerge less than two hours later puzzled or perhaps angry at what you have just witnessed on screen. Everybody is dealing with problems. Perhaps we should be thankful that they don’t have large footprints to leave behind.
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