When was it that you first realized that Anne Hathaway irritated you?
Was it in The Princess Diaries, where the 19-year-old perfectly embodied the awkward and frizzy-haired Mia Thermopolis, who goes from bookish wallflower to confident princess? Or in The Devil Wears Prada, where the 25-year-old infiltrated the high-paced and low-morals world of fashion magazines, going from a rigid intellectual to a take-no-shit journalist, all while wearing borrowed couture? Or in Les Misérables, where the 30-year-old transformed her appearance to portray a sickly, desperate, and destitute French woman who turns to prostitution care for her daughter, selling both her body and beauty to survive? (She won an Oscar for this one.)
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Or maybe one of these hits: Love & Other Drugs, or Interstellar, or The Dark Knight Rises? Or Brokeback Mountain or Ella Enchanted? Rachel Getting Married?
Which film, which character, which moment drove people to write headlines like these?
Whatever bizarre anti-Anne Hathaway epidemic was plaguing journalists (and the public), I've finally found the cure: just go see her shine in her new hilariously weird and totally random sci-fi comedy, Colossal. In other words — it's time to get over hating Hathaway (can you believe she even earned herself a slew of trolls called "Hathahaters"?). Because Hathaway, now 34, is funnier, cooler, and more charming than ever. And everyone just owes her an apology — stat.
In Colossal, Hathaway plays the fringy-haired Gloria, who just can't seem to get her shit together after being let go from her job writing for a website (the reason she is fired, as you learn later in the movie, hit very close to home for me). She's an unfiltered party animal, surrounding herself with booze, young, beautiful friends, and a terrible boyfriend, Tim (Dan Stevens), who views her as damaged trinket, rather than a woman in need of help and guidance during her mini mid-life crisis. She's not phony or princess-y or forcibly quirky.
She wears ripped jeans, forgets to set alarms to wake up on time, drinks too many beers, and isn't a fan of brushing her hair. She's the "cool girl" who left town to live in the big city (yep, New York), and she reluctantly returns home to her parents' to figure out her life, where she reunites with an old friend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), who owns the town's decrepit local watering hole.
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Gloria and Oscar, along with a few other townies, start to hang out together. She accepts a job at the bar, and boozes her way through the next few days. She doesn't take care of herself, she misses phone calls from her ex, and barely stays in touch with her family. She lies and lives her life from one unpredictable moment to the next; she has an attitude problem and is incredibly selfish in her actions. While Gloria is self-destructing, a mysterious Godzilla-like creature manifests in Seoul, South Korea, to the terror of the city (and the entire world). It ambles around, destructing anything in its path, seemingly unaware of its surroundings and the terrible repercussion of its actions. (I won't go any further into how Gloria and Godzilla relate to one another to spare you spoilers, but just know that it is wonderfully bizarre.)
The woman I just described to you sounds pretty crappy, right? She's lazy, listless, and lost. But, she's also the Anne Hathaway we never knew could exist, and it's so refreshing. She's funny! She messes up. She wears wrinkled clothing, feels uncomfortable in her own skin, and fails, hard and often. She also leans into the absurdity of the movie's plot and convinces the audience to root for her for the first time in a long time.
Her authenticity, paired with the film's original plot and her co-stars' charming performances, makes Colossal Hathaway's unexpected comeback film. It's never to late to reinvent yourself. Or save the world from a monster.