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User Reviews for: Colossal

AndrewBloom
CONTAINS SPOILERS8/10  6 years ago
[7.9/10] *Colossal* swerved me. Half an hour into the movie, I was still comfortably expecting it to be some combination of *Young Adult* and *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*. I figured that the protagonist, Gloria, would return home from the big city, relive a bit of her youth as the last time she felt good about herself and confront her alcoholism and the effect it has on the people around her. And I figured that the kaiju movie elements would work as a big colorful metaphor for that, the monstrousness of addiction and people losing control under the influence represented as a literal monster terrifying a city and causing death and destruction.

That’s a sound setup, one the film lets its audience settle into. The quiet, interpersonal drama of Gloria’s return to her hometown mixed with the high-magnitude danger of a fifty-foot tall creature attack Seoul makes for a winning, high concept film. The film’s cinematography is crisp and awash in fall colors, the performances and relationships feel lived in and real, and the movie mines its monster mash-up premise for real personal consequences. It all left me happily if warily waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Gloria’s alcohol addiction to tear something down in New England at the same time her towering equivalent was tearing things down in South Korea.

Instead, at around the halfway mark, *Colossal* reveals itself to be an examination of nice guy-ism, of the friendly, unsuspecting way an abuser can worm his way into your life and then try to exert control over it. The film introduces Oscar as Gloria’s childhood friend, and initially frames him as the kind, helpful counterpart to her meddlesome ex, Tim, who effectively booted her out of New York City. Tim is constantly shaming Gloria, giving her snootfuls of tough love, whereas Oscar gives her a job, seems to be understanding and forgiving and inclined to help her get back on her feet.

It turns out that Oscar is the villain of the piece. The film recontextualizes his previous offers of help as ways to foster Gloria’s dependence on him. Conversations that allegedly took place between them when she was near-blackout drunk may have been entirely and maliciously made up. And once Oscar realizes that Gloria slept with his friend Joel -- the prospect of which was enough to make the otherwise genial barkeep briefly snap earlier in the film -- the scales fall. Oscar becomes flatly abusive, emotionally blackmailing Gloria into staying near him, working with him, doing what he says, lest he use their magic connection to Seoul to take innocent lives.

I’ll admit, I found that jarring. But maybe it should be. Oscar fooled me in the same way that he fooled Gloria. While I assumed he was nursing a crush, and wouldn’t say no to Gloria being endeared to him, I thought he genuinely wanted to help her. His behavior escalates quickly after the midpoint of the movie, and that lends itself to some whiplash, but maybe that whiplash is true to life, the way nominally amiable people like Oscar who seem decent on the surface, can turn on a dime and become abusive when they’re not getting what they want.

It happens very suddenly in the film, which threw me off and is a little convenient for the film’s purposes and pacing, but the warning signs are subtle but firmly present, and it can happen suddenly in real life. And that initial disbelief I harbored, that gentle Oscar could suddenly turn into the real monster of the film, plays right into *Colossal*’s thematic purposes, of how slow we are to react or respond or believe it when we see or hear someone overstepping their bounds in dangerous, abusive ways.

That both halves of the movie is a tribute to Anne Hathaway, who manages to play Gloria as believably problem-ridden but also sympathetic. But it’s even more of a coming out party for Jason Sudeikis as Oscar. I’ve almost exclusively seen Sudeikis in comedic roles, and the way he manages to channel his affable everyman vibe into a character who is alternately cruel and kind, in the way that abusers are, is downright masterful. There’s so many levels of Oscar’s hidden pathology, and each event in the film peels another layer back to reveal something more ever more unassumingly disquieting beneath it. The epitomizes the toxic hand in the velvet glove the movie wants to craft, and manages to fill both the nice guy and Nice Guy™ sides of the role perfectly.

The film has its problems though. For one, it takes pains to explain both how this monster mash came to be, and how the dynamic between Gloria and Oscar started, in a childhood flashback that comes off as too neat and unnecessary. While the reveal that the mystical lightning strike on the top of her head gave Gloria her trademark head-scratch tic has some charm, it weakens the cool and mysterious qualities that the proxy monster routine possesses. And at the same time, the film drops plenty of noteworthy hints about how long Oscar has been this way in the present, without the bluntness of needing to show him stomping on her diorama as a kid.

For another, as much as the swerve with Oscar serves the film’s purposes, the film effectively lets Gloria off the hook for her alcoholism and bad behavior once it unveils him as the antagonist. While the movie flips Oscar’s role, it leaves Gloria’s ex-boyfriend Tim as a perhaps well-meaning but nonetheless lamentably controlling individual for pushing her to address her addiction. That’s not an issue in a vacuum, but the film suggests that Gloria genuinely has problems that require professional help (or at least acceptance), that she’s legitimately hurt people due to her drinking, and it never really resolves that. If anything, it suggests that she drinks because of these sorts of people in her life. I may unfairly applying expectations from *Young Adult* here, a film more firmly committed to exploring the ills of its protagonist, but it was disappointing to see *Colossal* scuttle those concerns to the side once the movie’s villain was revealed.

And the film’s ending is a little too quick and easy. There’s something neat about flipping the dynamic of which city playgrounds result in where these creatures appear. But it’s an ending that works better metaphorically than it does in-universe, given the complexities of flying to Seoul, getting the timing right, and figuring out the mechanics of grabbing Oscar.

Still, the metaphor works. *Colossal* frames Oscar not simply as wanting to possess Gloria, not simply lashing out after childhood slights, but as someone who resents and envies her for succeeding beyond his mark, who revels in her stumbles and failings, and uses them to control and abuse her. It’s crafts a monster far more frightening than anything that could crush buildings and smash helicopters. There are flaws in its execution, missed opportunities here and there, but the longer I sit with the movie’s swerve, with Oscar’s rapid transformation from friendly face to manipulative bastard, the more right and scary it feels.
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