Colossal review

The Anne Hathaway starring hybrid film “Colossal” solves the problems of both blockbuster spectacles and formulaic romantic comedies. Rom-coms often suffer from a lack of tension in the drama, leading to forced conflict that undermines the characters, and blockbusters often overlook their characters in favor of eye-popping visuals and ratcheting the stakes in the plot. Like the designer-dog puggle breed, that stops a pug’s snorting and stops a beagle’s howling, Nacho Vigalondo’s first English-language feature blends the two Hollywood traditions in a mutually beneficial way.

Anne Hathaway returns to her “Rachel Getting Married” acting toolbox, playing another mess who’s looking for redemption and respect at the same time. Her character Gloria returns to her small town after getting kicked out of her boyfriend’s (Dan Stevens) swanky New York apartment.  While sulking in the streets of her hometown, she runs into an old high school friend named Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) who’s been recently divorced and trying to keep his father’s bar alive.  Figuring that she might need a leg up, he offers Gloria a part-time job, unaware of her history with alcoholism.

Meanwhile, in Seoul South Korea a giant monster appears roughly the same time every night, seemingly unaware of its surroundings and stumbling into buildings before mysteriously disappearing into thin air. After watching the TV footage of this phenomena, Gloria and Oscar realize that the monster only appears across the globe whenever she visits the a grade-school park after a long night of drinking.  When Gloria has some conflicts at work and her ex decides to come back to visit her, this heightened sense of personal responsibility is challenged further.

Vigalondo’s film works on a number of allegorical levels.  Obviously there’s the commentary about alcoholism and its relationship to our past traumas and the many damages it can cause by accident. Hathaway’s interaction with fragile masculinity as an active female character is also fascinating to observe. Again, by flipping the romantic comedy love-triangle trope on its head, this story explores the inherent misogyny bred into that stock fantasy. 

The movie also discusses how the media treats disasters and wars abroad as a form of endless news cycle-entertainment. Having been released between two fresh bombings performed overseas by our government, and having watched certain news commentators wax poetic about the aesthetic beauty of our missile launches, the film's depictions of American's glued to the televised destruction seems all the more prescient.

Despite some undercooked narrative vagueness surrounding a couple short flashbacks and some truncated special effect sequences that gives away movie’s limited budget, “Colossal” executes it’s quirky goals fantastically. Sudeikis and Hathaway are great at shifting back and forth from comedic amiability to dramatically tense, and their arc is always reinforced by the movie’s larger ambitions as a commentary on genre cinema. Given that audiences are inundated by many movies per year about giant robots vs. giant monsters (“Power Rangers,” “Transformers,” “Pacific Rim”), it’s nice to finally see one with a core concern for relatable human experiences.

Grade: B+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Apr-2017

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Colossal"

Horrible Bosses 2 review

         After the surprise success of “The Hangover,” Hollywood hastily responded with a few high-concept, men-behaving-badly comedies to cash in on the trend. 2011’s “Horrible Bosses,” while not a laugh-a- minute classic by any means, was one of the better copycats.  Though the plot was merely serviceable,  it was at least highlighted by a few uncharacteristic performances from the likes of Kevin Spacey doing his gleefully-mean “Swimming with Sharks” thing, a bald and bug-eyed Colin Farrell, enjoying a break from being the heartthrob, and Jennifer Aniston being completely and unapologetically filthy. The film also reminded us of the comedic prowess of Jamie Foxx, who, after his Oscar success, was scrambling to find his footing again (and has yet to stabilize), and it successfully introduced Charlie Day, of FX’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” to the big screen.

           “Horrible Bosses 2,” however, continues to prove that comedy sequels usually can’t deliver the oftentimes incalculable chemistry of the first, which isn’t to say that the proceeding film--a little sitcom-ish and sloppy in its execution--was all that effective or original to begin with.  Here, the leading trio of Jason Bateman as the straight-man, Jason Sudeikis as the Vince Vaughn-esque, man-child player, and Charlie Day as the expressive over-reactor, never perform as naturally or as effortlessly as did the first time. Instead, their interactions appear forced and tired, the screenplay is thoughtlessly slapped together, and the movie’s exertion to stimulate laughs becomes increasingly unfunny as the plot lumbers from incident to incident.

           This time around the boys try to make it as their own bosses, creating and mass-marketing a Sky-Mall ready bathroom device called the Shower Buddy.  After accepting a shady deal with a larger cooperation to help fund and sell their product, new boss Bert Hansen (Christoph Waltz) and his petulant son Rex (Chris Pine) steal most of the profit for themselves, as well as the rights to their invention. This then, or course, leads the three dim-wits to go back to their criminal scheming, as they try to enact a complicated and illogical plan to fake the kidnapping of Bert Hansen’s son, using the ransom to buy back their company.

          With our leads now visibly bored and ineffectually improving their way through the entire film, the movie’s comedic success is thrust upon the efforts of the supporting cast, but the screenplay’s 1+?=comedy approach gives none of these actors anything substantial or funny to work with. Barely in the movie, Waltz is totally wasted and serves as nothing but a tedious mechanism for the majority of the film. Aniston returns as the nympho-dentist but is now stripped from the comedic place of power and irony that made her performance in the first film vaguely clever and is instead reduced to the butt of a sexist, male fantasy joke.  Jamie Foxx is clearly still having fun playing the criminal with a heart of gold but he too is chained to a messy script that gives his character a lack of believable motivation.  Chris Pine ends up with the best lines in the movie and the funniest stuff to do here but as game as he is, even he can’t keep this boat from sinking.

          Nobody asked for a “Horrible Bosses 2”, really, so nobody should be surprised that it basically sucks. Evenly-lit and comprised of mostly mid-shots and close-ups, the movie lacks just as much ambition visually as it does narratively. And neither of these problems would be particularly damning if the film could at least deliver the laughs, but, minus Chris Pine doing some entertaining sleaze and a too-little-late gag involving a chain-link fence, sadly, it does not.

Grade: D

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2014