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Colossal Review

Colossal was completely different to any film I had ever seen before. But it was ‘good’ different.

On paper it could have been a horror, romance or a comedy. Instead director Nacho Vigalondo gave us a twisted version of all three.

Gloria (Anne Hathaway) plays a writer with a drinking problem and behavioural issues, which prompts her boyfriend (Dan Stevens) t0 kick her our of his New York City apartment.

Gloria must go back to her little hometown and start a new life, and it’s there that she runs into her childhood friend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) who runs a bar. She takes a job as a bartender and spends her nights drinking with Oliver and his friends, Garth (Tim Blake Nelson) and Joel (Austin Stowell).

Here’s where things get weird.

Gloria sees on the news that a Godzilla-like monster is terrorising people in Seoul . Eventually, she realises that she is connected to it and can control it. Oscar can also control one of his own, and that where the real story begins.

Unless you know this ‘twist’ is coming, you won’t see it coming. Either way, at some point the film you think you’re about to see transforms into something completely different.

However, Colossal doesn’t become a ridiculous story about people who can control monsters from thousands of miles away, but a commentary on male entitlement and to some extent – misogyny.

The monsters are real but also metaphorical, and while Disney’s Inside Out used monsters to explore mental health issues, Colossal used them to explore societal ones – and it worked.

There is much more to Gloria and Oliver that initially meets the eye, which is about as much as you can say about the film without viewers knowing by the end what direction it will take.

As clever and as darkly funnily as Colossal can be, it could also be a big boring at times, and at just under two hours it felt as though the point of the film could have been put across in a lot less time. It doesn’t have too much value in terms of rewatchability, so if you want to watch it I wouldn’t recommend getting a DVD or Blu-Ray copy when it’s released.

Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis both put in a good performance, but it wasn’t their best work. Although, they probably did the best they could with the characters they were presented.

Overall it was a fun, clever film that will become a cult classic in feminist circles, but as different and it was, it wasn’t too memorable.

Score: 3/5

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