Gigantic

I remember wanting to see this right when it hit the Laemmle Sunset 5 in LA for about a week, but was a slacker and totally missed out! I didn't realize that this was even out on DVD yet til I saw the line-up of movies at the Telluride Film Festival and saw that there was a film called Gigante, and though it's not the same film, it made me think of this one and track it down on Netflix. I adore Zooey Deschenel and also thought Paul Dano was brilliant in both Little Miss Sunshine and There Will Be Blood (where I would have like to see him nominated), so I was stoked that this film was out on DVD already.

I'm starting to think that I'm just really tough to please lately when it comes to movies. I'm seeing a lot of movies that I don't necessarily consider to be time-wasters, but movies that I wouldn't see again, and may or may not even recommend. I kind of hate to say that I didn't like this movie, but I didn't.

***SPOILERS START HERE***
Brian (Paul Dano) works at a crappy job as a mattress salesman, who sells an expensive bed to a pissy man with back problems (played by John Goodman). The mattress is later paid for by his daughter, Happy (Zooey Deschenel). Brian and Happy end up in an odd relationship where Happy freaks out when she learns that Brian is in the process of adopting a baby. She has no real direction in life and pretty much just runs from anything that might intimidate her. Meanwhile, throughout the film, a random homeless(?) dude (Zach Galifianakis) is chasing Brian around and beating him up with no explanation or resolution. I was so thrown off and confused by this element of the film that I went searching message boards for answers. Apparently, from people's responses to the director's (Matt Aselton) Q & A sessions, he didn't have a lot of answers as to why her put certain elements in it. It seemed as though he did things to be intentionally quirky without any rhyme or reason, and called the film "Gigantic" because he liked the way the word sounded. That's total BS and a complete cop-out! There's way better words to use to name a film, unless the intention was to use "gigantic" to help viewers describe exactly the piece of crap that this film was. Maybe there was some other thought-provoking point that I missed, but it doesn't sound like it.

Verdict: A very (regretful,) enthusiastic thumbs DOWN!