Colossal

Sometimes actors do their finest work when they have to share the screen with giant lizards.

For example, Raymond Burr's sincere performance helped sell Americans on the recut Japanese kaiju classic Godzilla. Burr's work is especially impressive when one considers that he worked in a small studio (reportedly doing all of his scenes in a tense but productive 24 hours) pretending to see a monster and to interact with Japanese actors he'd never met. This gig helped him land Perry Mason in the same month.

Similarly, Oscar-winner Anne Hathaway easily manages not to get upstaged by a suitmation co-star.

Her Gloria is a once-promising writer whose only similarity with Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald is her ability to down gallons of alcohol.

After what seems like years of lost weekends, her boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens, Beauty and the Beast) kicks her out of his New York apartment. This forces her to move back to the small town where she grew up. After settling into her parents' empty home, Gloria runs into her childhood friend Oscar (Saturday Night Live alumnus Jason Sudeikis), who now runs a local bar.

It doesn't take much effort to realize this is a bad omen.

Oscar offers her a job and gives her a TV and a futon, but his generosity comes with his hair-trigger temper and feelings of inadequacy. The television doesn't seem to be much of gift because Gloria discovers that somehow her actions are tied to an enormous creature that looks like a walking stick (the bug, not the cane).

Half the world away, this critter is knocking down buildings and stomping on people in downtown Seoul. Suddenly, Kim Jong-Un's arsenal seems to be a mild annoyance instead of an existential threat.

There is a reason Gloria's decisions endanger the residents of South Korea's capital and largest city. Thankfully, Spanish writer-director Nacho Vigalondo lets the audience discover the reasons along with Gloria. There isn't a mystic or a zoologist to explain the situation to her and the audience. Much of the humor and the drive of the story comes from discovering the rules with her.

Hathaway filmed the role while she was four months pregnant, and it makes Gloria's struggle to regain her life and stop her kaiju doppleganger's violence seem more authentic. While the actress looks healthy and properly groomed, there is a sense of weariness and resolve that nicely counterpoints the sight of a performer in a suit tearing down miniature buildings.

With the overabundance of computer-generated visuals in today's movies, Vigalondo's decision to use retro techniques is refreshing. There's something appealingly tangible about physical objects being smashed. In addition, Seoul makes a scenic backdrop and thankfully gives the beleaguered Tokyo a breather.

Then again, Vigalondo may be more interested in the people in his story than the monsters. Sudeikis hasn't been asked to play a character this complicated before and effortlessly rises to the challenge. His Oscar can go from neighborly to abusive in half a second, and in his own way is as troubled as Gloria.

If it were merely a dramedy about an alcoholic trying to get sober and find her purpose in life, Colossal might still work. The other residents of Gloria's hometown are nicely realized (Tim Blake Nelson is great as a burned-out barfly), but the metaphor allows the movie to explore how actions in one part of the world have consequences elsewhere.

It's easy to forget that fantasy stories can do more than simply serve as a distraction. Sometimes they give us a better understanding of the real world than the stuff we label nonfiction.

MovieStyle on 05/05/2017