<Review by: Sailesh Ghelani>

Directed by Nacho Vigalondo. Starring Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis, Dan Stevens, Tim Blake Nelson, Austin Stowell

Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes

It starts off looking like a weird sci-fi film, then looks like a rom-com and finally turns into something that makes no sense and has no great metaphor hidden behind it all.

Without seeing much of Gloria’s (Anne Hathaway) life we are immediately expected to believe that she is an alcoholic – but probably has deeper issues – when her boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens) throws her out of his New York apartment. Off she goes to her small hometown to make sense of her life when she bumps into her old school buddy Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) who has a thing for her.

We rarely see Gloria getting drunk – apart from having a couple of beers and the morning-after shots of her waking up in the middle of a park and Oscar’s references to conversations she’s completely forgotten. At the same time, in Seoul, South Korea, a giant monster terrorizes the city. Magically, somehow, this beast and its actions are tied to Gloria’s drunken stupors!

At first, with all of the funny dialogue, you think this is a spoof of monster films. But you soon realise that it has more to do with the love-hate relationship between Oscar and Gloria. Or maybe it has to do with addiction or rage or perhaps squandered dreams. I wouldn’t really know. There’s not enough depth to the film or insight for you to figure out any meaning to it all.

Is Colossal interesting? Sure it is. But the premise has been wasted on this high-school spat between two ‘losers’ in life. Anne Hathaway does a great job and it’s good she does since the rest of the cast are flat. This could have been an exciting movie, but it turns out to be a promising premise gone wrong.