What is more interesting than gigantic monsters and robots attacking Seoul? A bunch of drunk Americans in a small American town who might be responsible for it all. That is essentially the central premise of Colossal, Spanish director Nacho Vigalondo’s fourth feature.
The writer-director tries to merge two stories that don’t actually have a meeting point. One is a low-key relationship drama, with Gloria (Anne Hathaway), an ex-blogger turned full-time alcoholic who returns to her hometown to “find herself”. There, she runs into old friend Oscar (Jason Sudekis) and begins to work at his bar as a waitress. A middling romantic drama begins unfolding between Oscar, Gloria and her ex-boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens).
Their self-indulgent problems provide the gateway into the other story, a basic giant monster versus giant robot film. The two divergent strands intersect because Gloria discovers that she might have something to do with the Godzilla-like creature in South Korea.
Vigalondo is unable to build on the promise of his idea and focuses on a stalker-ish romantic drama that has no connection to the creature feature taking place in South Korea. There are some charms, including Hathaway as the down-on-her-luck unemployed loser.
In his previous films, Timecrimes (2013) and Extraterrestrials (2011), Vigalondo had attempted a similar genre subversion by focussing on the human side of alien invasions and the invention of time travel. Colossal fails where his previous films succeeded, particularly in its over-stretched final act.