Colossal (Review)

Colossal is a movie.

Yeah, that's pretty much as good as I can do.

Fun Fact: Jason Sudeikis didn't even know he was in this movie.

Okay, fine.

So if you had been eavesdropping on my friend and I's discussion on the drive back from Colossal you'd find that while different things stood out to us in the movie, the majority of the film was a wash. I don't really have much to say about it, and neither did he.

The upshot of the movie is this: An alcoholic woman gets dumped by her snooty boyfriend, moves back home and gets a job with an old elementary school friend of hers. Meanwhile a monster is occasionally attacking Korea. Turns out she's more or less connected to the monster....or maybe she is the monster.

The thing that became apparent to me about halfway through the second act is that it's a "feminist" movie. And I don't mean a feminist movie. I mean "feminist" in quotations marks. It's a movie that was made by someone who wanted to appeal to feminists with little to no understanding of legitimate feminist discourse.

Basically speaking, there are only five characters in the whole movie. Four of them are men, and every single man is awful. Some are more awful than others, but they're all crappy.

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Guy 1. Is the ex-boyfriend, who mocks the main character's obvious alcoholism, but when she starts to clean up her act, attempts to belittle her more. He basically wants her to be completely dependent on him.

Guy 2. is Jason Sudeikis' character. A former classmate of hers, is a bar owner and also an alcoholic. His life fell apart due to his marriage falling apart or vise-versa. It's never outright explained. He becomes emotionally and physically abusive towards the end of the film.

Guy 3. is a drug addict.

And Guy 4. is basically a cowardly idiot who, when Guy 2 starts physically and verbally threatening people and ACTUALLY KILLING PEOPLE does nothing to stop him.

Of course only woman can stop man from his evil, right?

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing stupid about wanting to tell a story about an empowered woman conquering her demons, but this isn't that. This isn't a realistic story, and that's ignoring the fantasy element of the plot.

That's not to say this movie is really bad. There are several tense scenes when you see just how awful a person with the slightest amount of power can be. I guess at the end of the day that's what this movie really ends up exploring.

But the alcoholism thing (the best part of the plot), gets sandbagged the second you find out that Jason's character has been an asshole since he was like 11. I'm assuming that's before his substance abuse started.

Not to mention that the very last second of the movie completely destroys the main character's chance at once and for all putting alcohol's grip on her down.

Holy crap he's MARRIED TO OLIVA COCKBURN :O

I know this article has been rambly, but...that's kind of it.

Colossal has SOME good stuff in it, but while it's not good enough to be good... It's also not bad enough to be notable. It's like a 4/10.

Possessing the ultimate death sentence of any work; I can't recommend it to anyone.

• Not to Kaiju fans because the monster action is short lived and sidelined by other stuff
• Not to feminists because it's pandering and simple
• Not to Anne Hathaway fans because she's pretty unlikable (in this movie)
• Not to indie fans because it's not up-its-own-ass enough.
• It's not funny enough to be a comedy
• Not serious enough to be a drama
• And the fantasy is way to loosely explained to be a fantasy movie

It fails every test, but just barely. I don't have any solid critiques because I don't know how you'd go about fixing a movie like this.

If it's any consolation I'd say that seeing Jason Sudeikis in the role of a villain was awesome. He really was great to watch and by FAR the best part of the movie. It's just too bad that it happened to be this movie.