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Let's just start with the first scene. Sound good to you?
The film opens with a promising scene involving a monster that is very similar to Godzilla. In fact, the monster is similar enough to Godzilla that Toho ended up taking Voltage Pictures and Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) to court. This movie seemingly held enough value for a lawsuit to occur. Anyways, back to the first scene. The monster looks aesthetically perfect and the soundtrack jumps in right away with the mere glimpse of the monster. The soundtrack is grand and heavy, fitting into the movie seamlessly. BOOM, the film jumps to 25 years later. If the film had ended at that precise moment, I probably would've been okay with it. Unfortunately, Colossal turns into a disaster.
I had high hopes for Jason Sudeikis (Horrible Bosses) and Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables, The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar). While trailers looked odd, I was sold on the premise of the indie film. Sudeikis and Hathaway seemed like an odd matchup, but so did Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe before the release of Swiss Army Man. In all honesty, I was excited for this curveball of a film. To my dismay, the two actors should never ever be on screen together again, especially for this genre. At times, they both clearly overact and Hathaway's acting pushed me back into her Princess Diaries debut. Gloria is an annoyingly shallow character. On the other hand, Sudeikis's character constantly flip-flops between morality and serial-killer ideals. Imagine the rough ending of The Girl on the Train. That type of acting is prevalent throughout this whole film...
Legion M's shareholders might be happy that one of their investments has come to fruition, but I doubt the payoff will have been worth the effort. The one thing that Colossal deserves credit for is the monster scenes. The monsters look great and are still fun to watch. There are few monster scenes throughout the film but whenever they pop up, I was able to get the story out of my head and appreciate the effects. If there were more monster scenes, I might have been able to rank this a bit higher. Yet, it will sit at the bottom of my ranked 2017 film list for now.
The Bottom Line: Big flaws and odd acting bring out the worst in a story that could've benefitted from it's cool visuals.
Score: 4/10
The film opens with a promising scene involving a monster that is very similar to Godzilla. In fact, the monster is similar enough to Godzilla that Toho ended up taking Voltage Pictures and Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) to court. This movie seemingly held enough value for a lawsuit to occur. Anyways, back to the first scene. The monster looks aesthetically perfect and the soundtrack jumps in right away with the mere glimpse of the monster. The soundtrack is grand and heavy, fitting into the movie seamlessly. BOOM, the film jumps to 25 years later. If the film had ended at that precise moment, I probably would've been okay with it. Unfortunately, Colossal turns into a disaster.
I had high hopes for Jason Sudeikis (Horrible Bosses) and Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables, The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar). While trailers looked odd, I was sold on the premise of the indie film. Sudeikis and Hathaway seemed like an odd matchup, but so did Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe before the release of Swiss Army Man. In all honesty, I was excited for this curveball of a film. To my dismay, the two actors should never ever be on screen together again, especially for this genre. At times, they both clearly overact and Hathaway's acting pushed me back into her Princess Diaries debut. Gloria is an annoyingly shallow character. On the other hand, Sudeikis's character constantly flip-flops between morality and serial-killer ideals. Imagine the rough ending of The Girl on the Train. That type of acting is prevalent throughout this whole film...
Legion M's shareholders might be happy that one of their investments has come to fruition, but I doubt the payoff will have been worth the effort. The one thing that Colossal deserves credit for is the monster scenes. The monsters look great and are still fun to watch. There are few monster scenes throughout the film but whenever they pop up, I was able to get the story out of my head and appreciate the effects. If there were more monster scenes, I might have been able to rank this a bit higher. Yet, it will sit at the bottom of my ranked 2017 film list for now.
The Bottom Line: Big flaws and odd acting bring out the worst in a story that could've benefitted from it's cool visuals.
Score: 4/10
Image credit:
​​By younghollywood - www.younghollywood.com, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53611751
By Christopherpeterson at en.wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3840611
​​By younghollywood - www.younghollywood.com, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53611751
By Christopherpeterson at en.wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3840611
