Colossal – Strangely addictive

The term ‘car-crash’ normally means something that’s really bad and yet you can’t bring yourself to look away.  I think it would be a little unfair to refer to ‘Colossal’ as a ‘car-crash’ of a film, because it’s not bad at all, in fact, it’s rather touching and uplifting, but I certainly couldn’t stop myself from watching, even though I have to confess I’m not entirely sure of the point.

Thinking about it, I do wonder how commercially successful it was because I can’t really think of the target audience it was supposed to be aimed at.  If you’ve seen any of the marketing material surrounding it, you may well have spotted the prominent monsters crashing through major world cities.  In the light of the ‘Pacific Rim’ movies you may well be expecting an action blockbuster, but you would be well off the mark with that one.  Also, prominently featured in the film’s posters is its star Anne Hathaway smiling and looking a little bit kookie.  This almost makes the film come across as a happy-go-lucky comedy, maybe with a romantic element contained within?  Again, well wrong.

In fact, it’s almost hard to explain about the film’s plot without giving too much away.  Anne Hathaway plays a struggling alcoholic who gets caught up in a much larger matter (pun intended) regarding giant monsters crashing through a city on the other side of the world.  How are these two situations connected?  Well, you’ll have to watch the film to find out.

I will say that the film doesn’t give a clear and cut explanation to everything it’s presented the audience with, but it gives you enough to allow you to fill in the blanks yourself with (film) logic.  What you get is actually a drama about an alcoholic struggling with her demons and those around her that wish to either help or hinder her.  Yes, there are also giant monsters in there, too.

As long as you expect drama first and sci-fi second, you should enjoy it.  There’s not much here in the way of humour or action, so certainly don’t hold out for anything that remotely resembles ‘Pacific Rim.’ As I said, I don’t know who the target audience for this is, only that I enjoyed it and found that I was definitely rooting for Anne Hathaway’s character and found her a flawed, yet endearing hero.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that