'Colossal' A Review

Colossal is a scifi dramedy about Gloria(Anne Hathaway) a blogger with a drinking problem who moves into her now vacant childhood home after being kicked out by her boyfriend. She reconnects with grade school classmate Oscar(Jason Sudeikis) and begins working at his bar. After a night of heavy drinking she discovers an odd connection with an international incident which puts her on a path of confrontation with Oscar.

Hathaway is good as she typically is but she fails to find any real pathos or depth, not for lack of trying but because of the scattershot script. Sudeikis after a turn about half way through the film plays drastically against type and does it well but he too is hamstrung by the disparate themes and threads of the narrative. The other cast members are all serviceable but all suffer from a lack of plot coherence.

Although competently shot, scored, and cast the insurmountable problem of the film is the story itself. There are multiple ideas that are introduced and then underdeveloped or abandoned completely. Alcoholism is used as a shortcut to character and then discarded, Nice Guy Syndrome and male entitlement is hinted at but not actually addressed, the scifi/fantasy element is treated with a bizarre offhandedness until everything is revealed in an anticlimactic flashback at the end. Lots of great ideas but it comes together more as a child's finger painting rather than a Pollack. Colossal is getting relatively good reviews but it seems the accolades are based on the potential of the film rather than its actual execution. The reality is that it is a befuddling mess attempting social commentary and spectacle but failing at both.

Ambitious but virtually incoherent.

Don't See It.