Colossal: The genre-defying film with a brain

IT’S not as if Anne Hathaway needs to prove why her haters are wrong. But if they wanted some irrefutable evidence, Colossal is it.

REVIEW

HOW do you describe Colossal?

It has a Godzilla-style creature attacking downtown Seoul but it’s not really a monster flick. There’s a love triangle between three attractive people but it’s not a romance. It’s darkly funny but it’s not really a comedy.

And it’s that genre-twisting originality that makes Colossal such a clever film — you’re highly unlikely to have seen anything else quite like it.

Gloria (Anne Hathaway) is a screw-up. She was fired from her writing job a year ago, is inconsiderate and has a far too dependent relationship with alcohol.

When her condescending boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens) kicks her out of their NYC apartment after another all-nighter, Gloria, tail between her legs, goes back to her childhood home upstate.

Now empty, the house doesn’t have a lick of furniture, but broke Gloria has nowhere else to go. She runs into her schoolfriend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) who now owns his father’s bar and offers her a job there as a bartender. She spends her nights there getting blind with Oscar and his buddies Garth (Tim Blake Nelson) and Joel (Austin Stowell).

Nothing like a wool-collared jean jacket in the autumn morning.

When Gloria recovers from one of her blackout drinking sessions in the mid-afternoon, she sees on the news that a kaiju monster has attacked Seoul. Appearing and disappearing in a storm-cloud, the monster rampages for a few minutes, destroying buildings and stomping on Koreans. The monster returns every few days at exactly 8.05pm.

Thanks to a familiar head twitch, it’s not long before Gloria realises she’s connected to this impossible monster on the other side of the world.

On the surface, Colossal seems to be this quirky flick about a New Yorker manifesting or controlling this monster 11,000 kilometres away. But it’s actually a really smart way to frame a story about emotional abuse, alcoholism, control and men being arseholes to women.

Director Nacho Vigalondo said that Colossal was inspired by male entitlement, Gamergate and the misogyny of the alt-right, especially online.

Using the concept of a monster movie to highlight the uglier strains of gender politics in our seemingly progressive society is an imaginative way to discuss the issues without browbeating someone. It sort of sneaks up on you and before you know it, you’re in a different movie to the one you walked into — in a good way — even if the tonal shift was slightly abrupt.

A different look for Anne Hathaway.

Gloria is not the kind of character you’d normally find yourself rooting for — she is deeply, deeply flawed and lives in a kind of irresponsible stupor. Colossal challenges you to find redemption in her failings, to tap into your reserves of empathy for someone so easily tossed aside.

On that note, Hathaway, who’s always been a talented thespian, is perfectly cast with the “Hathahate” phenomena adding to the complexity of the audience’s relationship with Gloria, asking us to check our own complicity in demonising ambitious women in general.

Sudeikis’ casting is, similarly, a masterstroke as someone who perennially plays the “nice guy”. Without saying too much more, by the end of the film, you’ll really appreciate the extra dimensions these actors’ external baggage bring to the roles.

Ultimately, Colossal is an empowering story for anyone who’s been belittled, harassed or abused by someone who hates themselves more than they will ever acknowledge.

At times menacing and at times hilarious, the fresh and intelligent Colossal is the kind of unexpected delight that should easily gain cult status.

Rating: 3.5/5

Colossal is in cinemas from Thursday April 13.

Continue the conversation on Twitter with @wenleima.

Be prepared to regret your Hathahate.

Originally published as Colossal: The genre-defying film with a brain