Sundance Review: Colossal

With four movies now under my belt at this year's Sundance Film Festival, it's time I start sharing my reviews of them. The first film I saw at the festival was Colossal, a film starring Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis that I previously previewed HERE. Colossal revolves around the ridiculous but intriguing premise of a party girl named Gloria (Anne Hathaway,) discovering she has the insanely implausible power to conjure a giant monster over Seoul, South Korea. That's the simplest way to sum up the film without revealing the many avenues that writer/director Nacho Vigalondo takes the film from there.

The first half of Colossal is so much fun as it revels and delights in the absurdity of Gloria's new found power. As a spectator watching the proceedings, I was so excited at all the possibilities of where this movie was going. Unfortunately, though, all the potential of the first half is pretty much completely ruined by the direction the story takes in the second half. The film gets really messy as it tries to shove as many possible commentaries as it can in trying to transform the film into some sort of a sloppy allegory. The tone shifts so abruptly from scene to scene it becomes incredibly jarring to the viewer and really takes you out of the film because of your discomfort.

Sadly there's no way around it than to label Colossal a disappointment. It would be one thing if the movie had been bad from start to finish, but what makes it so disappointing is that the movie of the second half lets down and betrays what the movie of the first half could have been: a hilariously bizarre cult classic. Instead, it tries to be a commentary think-piece with too much to say and not enough focus to say it well. RATING: 5.5/10