I kept waiting for a deep, profound message to hit me while I was watching Colossal. I thought it was leading to something major. When it was over, only one message remained: This world is full of awful people. Not exactly something you would find in a fortune cookie.
After Gloria's (Anne Hathaway) boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens) dumps her and kicks her out of their apartment, Gloria heads to her small hometown to get her life together. Meanwhile, a monster has surfaced in South Korea. Gloria soon discovers that her own movements control that of the monster. How she handles this dictates where the rest of the story goes.
The film has a light-hearted feel to it at first, but switches to a darker tone around the second act. Too dark in my opinion. The mod shift is both jarring and unwelcome. You come to have a certain expectation, or hope rather, as to how things are going to turn out and you soon realize you will probably be disappointed.
There are a lot of unnecessary occurrences in Colossal that are only there for the sake of advancing the plot. Normally I wouldn't mind this if there were other strong points to provide a balance. Instead it was almost two hours of watching characters that weren't even remotely likeable. Even villainous characters typically have enduring, redeeming qualities at times. Not this crew. It felt like Director/Writer Nacho Vigalondo took what was supposed to be a short and turned it into a full-length film.
For all of its faults, I will say that Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudekis succeeded with very strong performances. Both are tragic characters, flawed by the choices they have made in life. Unfortunately, their respective performances weren't enough to save the film.
I applaud the film's originality, particular in today's film landscape where piggyback and remake are the words of the day. I think Colossal had potential, but it fell flat for me. I give it a 52.
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