Ella es un monstruo

Greetings from Lithuania.

I found "Colossal" (2016) much more interesting, dark and deep then i thought i will be after reading a premise. This isn't your typical comedy staring Jason Sudeikis - it isn't funny movie, except if you are looking for some very dark comedy.

Premise here looks like from a mind of Spike Jonze of Charlie Kaufman. Although it isn't as brilliant as those two might have made this movie - i loved the story overall and movie itself.

Ovreall, "Colossal" is a kinda fresh take on a premise. There is a very dark humor down below, but i enjoyed it very much in a first place because of very solid writing, pacing (at running time 1 h 43 min this movie never dragged) and not by "a numbers" movie. Good, underrated movie.

Fist off, this is a good film. Let me get that out of the way. To h*ll with the haters. It's smart. Clever. Unique. If you pay attention there are plenty of gags. Hathaway shines and all the rest. It's just NOT the film the trailers lead people to believe, and I really hate that. The trailers filled seats with people who were expecting to see some quirky romcom and instead they got 'Annie Darko' and wound up hating it. And this is a major pet peeve of mine. The same thing happened with "White God" This kind of advertising always backfires. The PR dpt just puts together any trailer they think will fill the seats on opening night, then it brings the wrong audience and hurts the film in the long run. Colossal should have been advertised like "Motorama" or "The Dark Backwards"... or "Eating Raul". It's a dark edgy comedy and it's not supposed to be of the 'wacky wild hilarity' genre'. OK, it's not a life altering cinema, but it is far better than most of the critiques I've read. And one thing all those critiques had in common...? They all said it wasn't what they were expecting, or it couldn't figure out what it wanted to be. Wrong. The film was exactly what it was trying to be. The viewers just couldn't figure out what it was doing because they all thought it was trying to do something else.... primarily because of the way it was presented. Not that it's easy to describe. Just abandon your preconceived notions before you watch. I actually like it better than the film I thought it would be.

This movie takes a few detours at the beginning before it finds the track it wanted to be on. So, dear reader, patience is a virtue if you want to understand what is going on.

Some elements of the movie are dragged out a bit like chewing gum until you just want to give up watching. Then it wakes up.

It is definitely a fantasy film without an obvious starting point but it recovers nicely. You really have to pay attention to catch the little explanatory nuances that are peppered throughout the script. Ms. Hathaway and Mr. Sudeikis do a good job of interpreting the two lead characters. The supporting cast of Mr. Nelson and Mr. Stowell round out the set of performances to watch.

If you stick with it, though, this might remind you of a famous superhero movie. There are no superheroes here, just something strange going on. Enjoy!

This is a love-it or hate-it movie. If you were looking for a RomCom or Kaiju movie, you may be in the hate-it camp. If, however, you want the clever outworking of a dark metaphor presenting itself as a mystery, you may have found a film you can appreciate. That might, also, have been the draw for the cast. Unusual roles for all the actors, performed well. Anne Hathaway held our attention. In terms of storytelling, there were times when the metaphor and the mystery collided with each other and the audience may be left (ironically) scratching their heads, trying to fit the pieces together. With that said, I am giving this film a 7 (clever) out of 10. {A Dark Metaphor}

The viewer feels little compassion for the problems these characters both find and make for themselves. Worse, the characters wreak murderous destruction on an Asian nation, but we're supposed to feel sorry for their romantic entanglements? The story, such as it is, is told thru the wrong end of the telescope.