Colossal
I was a fan of this years new
addition to the giant monster movie when Kong: Skull Island came out. In fact,
it was one of the first movies I reviewed in my return to blogging on a regular
basis. I would have written last week but I was in preparations for moving my
apartment and well, I just didn’t wanna. I saw the trailer for this movie when
I went to see Your Name and it intrigued me enough to pull the trigger this
week. Colossal isn’t really what you’d expect though. In the world of Godzilla movies, you come to
accept certain tropes of the genre. The Monster is always gonna attack some Asian
country, it doesn’t care about the human population and occasionally it will
have to fight another monster of varying degrees of evilness. The human
population is seemingly unable to control or destroy the monsters and watch
helplessly as the creature destroys the city. In the case of Colossal, starring Anne
Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis, it takes those conventions and turns them on their
ear for what turns out to be a very dark comedy.
Gloria (Anne Hathaway) is an
out-of-work party girl who lives in New York with her oft angered boyfriend.
She stays out all night and sleeps all day. She’s not looking for a job and finally
her boyfriend, ignored and under appreciated (while still being a complete
too), kicks her out of their shared apartment and forces Gloria to leave life
in New York and move back to her hometown to squat in her parent’s old house.
She vows to stop drinking and turn her life around. The she runs into Oscar, a
childhood friend, who happens to own the local bar. After a night of binge
drinking she wakes up in a park and returns home to see news reports surfacing
that a giant creature is destroying Seoul, South Korea. The world will never be
the same. Oscar’s bar, once failing, becomes a local gathering place to watch
news of the monster and Oscar hires Gloria to tend bar while she gets things
together. As time goes on, Gloria gradually starts to come to the realization
that she is somehow connected to the monster destroying poor South Korea.
As you start this movie you
expect that Jason Sudeikis and Anne Hathaway are meant to fall in love and
somehow that will save the world from the monster of Gloria’s creation. That’s
where this movie won me over. They didn’t go obvious and lazy. Gloria and Oscar
do have chemistry and indeed for much of the movie you believe this is the
connection they’ll make. I’ve always been a fan of movies that take expectation
and then give you an alternative you didn’t expect. This movie takes a dark
turn that I didn’t see coming and then rewards the viewer by not pulling its
punches. For Hathaway it is a good role that allows her to play a darker and
yet heart filled character that you both feel sorry for and repulsed by. She is
not an innocent girl who stumbles into an extraordinary life. She is a world
weary woman who finds the extraordinary thrust upon her. She doesn’t want to
hurt anyone and with Oscar’s help, she does begin to turn her life around.
Oscar, on the other hand, is a world weary man in a small town who feels the
world has forgotten about. He’s dark but affable. You like him for much of the
movie and indeed root for him and Gloria to find something in each other that
they don’t see separately.
By the end of the movie, the
world is changed. Not just Korea and our world as we know it, but Gloria and
Oscar’s world as well. Should Gloria go back to New York with her sometimes
borderline abusive boyfriend or stay in the small town where she’s built a life
for herself. There is no really good option for Gloria and that’s the way life
is. I’d personally love nothing more than to have the girl of my dreams say she
loves me and that we deserve to be together. She, on the other hand, would
rather I move on. I think a message, maybe one I was looking for, that this
movie tells people is that we all have our demons. You have to decide whether
or not you can accept someone else’s. You can’t half ass this movie and pay it
off with any satisfaction. What I appreciate is that they didn’t shy away from
the story they wanted to tell to give us a happy ending. Gloria and Oscar are
two characters who both deserve each other and deserve better. Much like real
life.
Mr. Unhappy sez: Colossal destroys Seoul while still having one.
Instant Watch of the Week
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Rogue One is a movie that most of us have probably already seen. Let's face it if it has the words Star Wars in it, we're all probably gonna check it out. Still Rogue One is a tale of absolute sacrifice and a hell of a movie. It also may have the most bad ass Darth Vader since he was cracking necks in A New Hope. I was not sure what I was going to think about it but it was easily the best prequel of all the prequels. What I really love is that if you watched Rogue One and then put on A New Hope, you could continue it as though a movie hadn't ended. It fits with the story we all grew up with (me at least once a week from 4-12) and continues that story. It fills in the blanks where the prequel films never did. Sure you can blame Hayden and his wooden performance but George never found his way back to the galaxy far far away. He'd grown up and lost his way. Thankfully he handed the story over to Disney and they've elevated and grown the story. I now look forward to each new installment.
Mr. Unhappy sez: You can go back to your childhood...
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