Gigantic

I really enjoyed the setting and the characters played by Goodman, Deschanel, Dano, and the entire supporting cast.

But many parts of the plot were not believable, or even nonsensical.

The film resorts to passé plots (quiet boy meets sexy rich girl), but where it is inventive, it's inexplicable (the stalker, the lifelong interest to adopt, ...).

Goodman is a favorite of mine anyway, and his character here serves to balance the meekness of the other leads.

It was worth my time, however if it wasn't able to get Goodman or the other leads, it would have been a forgettable film.

TP in Texas

Brian Weathersby (Paul Dano) sells insanely high price mattresses in NYC. It's an indie of his life with all kinds of random quirky characters. Happy Lolly (Zooey Deschanel) is the daughter of Al (John Goodman) who purchased a mattress for $14k. He wants to adopt a Chinese baby. She's flaky. They hit it off.

This is filled with great actors I love. They seem to be doing good work. I should like this, but the story is a series of meandering scenes that drives aimlessly. They crawl along without any sense of drama. It's a battle of the quirky characters, and nobody really wins in this.

The main protagonist of 'Gigantic' is twenty-eight year old Brian - a morose, monosyllabic mattress salesman. Some jaded film-goers might feel they've watched Brian's charisma-free loner cousins overplaying their quirkiness in far too many Indie projects. In 'Gigantic' Brian possesses the stubborn ambition to adopt a Chinese baby - a plot contrivance designed to distract from his stupefying dullness. Despite being single, earning little money and suffering from violent hallucinations, an irresponsible adoption agency is helping him achieve his goal.

The story begins when Al Lolly, an overweight businessman with chronic back problems, visits the warehouse where Brian is employed. Big Al purchases a mattress and later sends his beautiful daughter to settle the bill. When Happy Lolly arrives, she asks Brian to help transport her father to a chiropractic appointment, and while they await its conclusion, Happy invites Brian to have sex with her. He doggedly obliges in an underground car park - but their romance doesn't amount to much. Happy immediately expresses her own quirkiness with feeble attempts to escape the relationship, while Brian continues to obsess about Chinese babies. Like it or leave it - that's how love is in Indie-World.

The film's script is a strange beast - the main story is the lovers' moth-eaten love affair, but the sub-plots contain some offbeat black humor, providing John Goodman, Ed Asner, Jane Alexander, Clarke Peters and Zooey Deschanel with opportunities to create some original characters. Somehow, mysteriously, their combined talents manage to keep 'Gigantic' afloat while Paul Dano impersonates a sack of potatoes in the central role.

After reading the comments and reviews on this page for the film Gigantic, I felt compelled to register an account on IMDb and add my own voice to the apparently confused chorus. My reaction to the film itself was strong, but not nearly as strong as my reaction to the comments people have been adding to this page. If I had gone to check IMDb site for the film before seeing it, as I usually do, I probably would have been turned off by the low rating and negative comments, and wouldn't have ended up seeing this little gem of a film. And that would have been too bad, because it really is a nice little film; One that has qualities that apparently inspire vitriol in some viewers, but their anger and 'disappointment' just bewilders me.

What is not to like in this film? The cast is amazing. The performances are top-notch and completely appropriate for the tone that director Aselton is trying to create. I've read comments that have mentioned 'believability' of certain scenes and plot points, but I think these types of viewers were doomed to misunderstand the film from the very beginning (and isn't it always these viewers who do choose to comment? bashing on what they don't understand). And that's not even to say this is some kind of elitist 'quirky indie' film as most people suggest. It's to the point now where 'quirky' is just another derogatory and pejorative term for something outside the realm of someone's expectations, experience, and capability of understanding. It's a term the narrow-minded use.

Gigantic is well worth your time and money. It's shot beautifully. It has some great performances that create genuine laughs, not from absurdity for its own sake or from cheesy one-liners, but from the performance choices themselves and from the character development. Did I mention Matt Walsh was great as well? The whole cast is wonderful, and I personally look forward to whatever Aselton does next.

Gigantic is an eccentric film about two oddball families. Brian is bored with his job of selling mattresses and is obsessed with adopting a Chinese baby. Despite having loving parents and supportive brothers he cannot relate to them and lives alone frugally in an apartment. Harriet or Happy who walks into Brian's showroom one day and falls asleep on a mattress has a dysfunctional family with a loud mouth hypochondriac father, an estranged disconnected mother and a self-centered older sister. Brian and Harriet are drawn to each other sexually but cannot connect emotionally and the Chinese baby only makes things worse.

Alternately comical and melancholic this surreal story is about people managing their angst. The exact reasons for Brian's anxiety are not stated but it is possibly because he was brought accidentally into this world by his parents.

There is a bizarre subplot in which a homeless man stalks Brian and keeps attacking him without any purpose. The discerning few can easily see this as a subtext for the demons of self-doubt tormenting Brian's mind. For others it could be an annoying red herring.

It is a film that will make you feel good if you have cracked the subplot.