by Jorge Molina
As much as her career seems to have been engraved by "light" and "fluffy" material like The Princess Diaries or The Devil Wears Prada, and despite the bubbly and eager-to-please persona that she has become infamous for, Anne Hathaway is no stranger to playing characters plagued by demons: recovering addict, martyrized mother, troubled wife, woman with degenerative disease. She’s always had the outstanding capacity to portray a complex darkness within.
Colossal brings this into the light like no movie she’s done before...
After all, the premise of the movie is the very idea of Gloria’s (Hathaway) internal demons materializing into a kaiju-like monster that wreaks havoc in Seoul.
The story is a simple metaphor cleverly taken to a cinematic scale that ambitiously combines psychological drama, magical realism, and dark comedy. That mix does not always blend well together; the attempt to make a small character drama work also as a large-scale disaster movie feels muddled at times. But it is incredibly effective when it touches on its emotional and thematic core: a woman grappling with the chaos she brings around her, whether it is her small hometown, or the terrified streets of South Korea.
The performances do the very tricky job of selling the hard-to-buy premise, and they do it well. Hathaway is given the richest material she’s had in a long time, and achieves that sweet Acting Spot of losing herself in enjoying the performance.
[SPOILER ALERT] There’s one particular scene, in which Jason Sudeikis’ Oscar (after realizing he can also conjure up a monster) stomps through a park to Hathaway’s terror. She gives emotional gravitas to a moment (and an entire film) that, out of context, would have been quite silly.
Sudeikis is the secret weapon of the movie, Gloria’s childhood friend who at first becomes a solace when she moves back, but slowly turns into a literal and metaphorical monster of his own. He is one of the most hate-able film characters I’ve seen in a while, and adds real, life-threatening and heavily emotional stakes to the movie. He and Anne play very nicely against one another; you can feel their toxic co-dependence. [/SPOILER]
Colossal is a smart movie that aims for so much more than it actually accomplishes, but its bravery to tell a specific message in a different way is genuinely refreshing. If it weren’t such an unusual premise to get past, it would garner more attention than it probably will. I hope I'm proven wrong. But, just like Anne herself, it should not be boiled down to what it seems to be; there is a compelling complexity and darkness underneath.