Colossal: Shin-Anne Hathaway

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DC Murderverse: Nov 10, 2016; "Tell that to Zod's snapped neck!"

Have you ever read a review of a movie and thought "man, what parallel universe movie did this critic watch?"

Well here's Rex Reed's Colossal review.

quote:

COLOSSAL
(0/4 stars)

To quote the late, great Dorothy Parker, �What fresh hell is this?� I�m talking about Colossal, a delirious, moronic mess that landed with a thud at last year�s Toronto International Film Festival and now opens commercially, seven months later, with a head-scratching �Duh�. What�s it about? Hard to say. Anne Hathaway plays a weird, drunken Goth girl named Gloria who becomes obsessed by breaking news of a humongous behemoth of a monster lizard that looks like Godzilla and terrorizes the city of Seoul, South Korea. The United Nations declares a world crisis, but Gloria is the one who ignores warnings of world destruction and actually hops a plane to go there, hoping to live and love forever in a cheesy B movie. Join her at the risk of losing your own sanity before the projector stops running.

First, there�s a long, preposterous screenplay to suffer through, by the Spanish writer-director Nacho Vigalondo, whose name sounds like a Mexican appetizer. When the beer-besotted Gloria�s boyfriend Tim (a role so vacant it could be played by anyone, but goes instead to the unlucky Dan Stevens from Downton Abbey) kicks her out of their New York apartment because he�s tired of never seeing her without a hangover, she goes back to her hometown and hooks up with an old school chum names Oscar who owns a bar (Jason Sudeikis, in the worst role of his extremely�and unnecessarily�overcrowded career). Godzilla dominates the TV screen, Gloria sympathizes with the monster while drowning herself in vodka, and Oscar divides his time between beating up his customers and identifying with Godzilla�s new friend, a robot.

Together they think they are the real-life equivalents of horror-movie clich�s. He burns up his bar. She wrecks her house. He punches her in the face and leaves her with an ugly black eye. This is a love story? When Godzilla and his new sidekick, a robot, develop a big international fan base, Gloria and Oscar think they have become the human equivalents of horror-movie fiction. Finally, the demented Gloria heads for the airport, boards a plane, and flees to Korea to find the monster. When last we see her, she�s tramping through the streets of Seoul with her black eye, looking trashed, and watching the lizard on her cell phone. She ends up in a bar, picking up her downward spiral where she left off.

I�d like to tell you how rabid, illogical, far-fetched and stupid Colossal is, but words fail me at last. Anne Hathaway looks like an asylum inmate wearing an old, discarded Anna Wintour wig. Jason Sudeikis displays not even one iota of his usual comic timing. The quirky direction by Nacho Vigalondo , which appears to have been phoned in from the corner Rite-Aid, results in a movie that is different for the sake of being different, but unfortunately, he forgot (or doesn�t have a clue) how to make it interesting. Colossal is almost as unwatchable as it incomprehensible, and that�s a colossal understatement.

DC Murderverse fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Apr 24, 2017

# ¿ Apr 23, 2017 05:56

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 23:46

DC Murderverse: Nov 10, 2016; "Tell that to Zod's snapped neck!"

Jenny Angel posted:

I think the part that rules most is his brief throwaway line of sympathy toward Dan Stevens, confirming that the movie's biggest sin in his eyes was pulling Stevens away from his proper home in middlebrow period fiction

uh, his real home is b-movie actioners where he plays sociopathic super soldiers who charm the pants off of people. (go watch The Guest if you haven't)

# ¿ Apr 23, 2017 06:09

DC Murderverse: Nov 10, 2016; "Tell that to Zod's snapped neck!"

glam rock hamhock posted:

well part of the whole thing for Oscar is his life sucks and he feels weak and powerless. one of the reasons he embraces him being a robot so really is because he finally is important and had power (which is also why he gets so annoyed when Gloria won't let him participate in the apology). by the end here's just reveling in his power, figuring that if he can't control a girl he thinks is better than himself, he might as well terrorize a city.

also I think the hair thing was just about giving Gloria ticks that would be reconizble when she was a monster. I'm not sure if she does the hair thing as the monster but it just generally establishes her as being the type to do that sort of thing which is emphasized more with the head scratching thing

also it's where she got struck with lightning the day her and Oliver went into the area that would become the park for the first time and she saw him crushing her project. I think that also has something to do with how spacey she is.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2017 07:58

DC Murderverse: Nov 10, 2016; "Tell that to Zod's snapped neck!"

jivjov posted:

Speaking of Alamo Drafthouse, that's where I saw the film, and I was vaguely uncomfortable after having one of the Colossal themed drinks off the menu after the film spent so much time on alcoholism. It seems almost a little tone deaf on behalf of the theater

this is actually hilarious. Like making a cocktail called The Lost Weekend (which actually is a thing that involves Rum and a hint of Absinthe, which actually sounds very interesting). When I worked a movie theater bar we occasionally had to do something similar, and while we never had something this ironic, we had a whole list of cocktails themed after Obvious Child that were all wildly inappropriate. (the actual name we settled on, the Plan C, was just on the other side of the line, which is good because I was very proud of it)

actually, upon further research, one of the cocktails is literally called "The Most Irresponsible Thing" which sounds like they knew what they were doing after all. But also they have deals on 6 can PBR buckets which I think means they want people to drink along with the movie.

# ¿ May 1, 2017 05:30

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