Video Corner - GIGANTIC, Gigantic Disappointment

Ah, the quirky indie romantic comedy. There've been good ones throughout film history (ANNIE HALL, THE GRADUATE, I even enjoyed most of GARDEN STATE). And then there are the ones that seem to just be quirky for quirky's sake (500 DAYS OF SUMMER). GIGANTIC falls squarely into the latter category.

BIG-ASS SPOILERS BELOW

GIGANTIC tells the tale of Paul Dano's Brian Weathersby. We're introduced to Dano visiting his friend doing experiments on rats in a lab. Then he gets the crap beaten out of him by a crazy homeless guy. Then he goes to his job, selling high-end mattresses, where obnoxious millionaire John Goodman comes in to buy one. Later, he sends his daughter, Happy (yes, happy) to pick up the mattress. She falls asleep on the bed for hours. Happy and Brian start dating, or more specifically, start having sex in odd places. Brian's dream since he was a little child was to adopt a Chinese baby, something he's on a waiting list for. He hangs out with his elderly father and brothers, taking mushrooms and gathering wild mushrooms in a field. He's shot at, then shot, by the homeless guy. He eats a fancy French dinner. He gets approved for a baby. He stabs and kills the homeless guy, who turns out to be a figment of his imagination. Happy gets freaked out and breaks up with him. And some more stuff happens.

This movie was highly annoying, despite the fact that Zooey Deschanel gets completely nude in it. I have no idea why anyone in it, including Deschanel, Goodman, Dano, even Ed Asner, wanted to be in it. It's just plain weird. The protagonist is an oddball, the love interest is an oddball, and there's absolutely nothing driving the movie. It's not the story of a guy who had a jacked-up family, so he has to do whatever he can to provide a home for his incoming baby. It's not about how a woman comes to find the man she loves in the most unexpected of ways and how she gets the family she's not looking for. Things just happen for no reason whatsoever.

Why does Brian sell weird mattresses? Why is he taking drugs with his family? Why does he want a Chinese baby (he's wanted one since he was 7 is not a good backstory or proper motivation)? About the only thing that happens that makes any sense is that Happy freaks out and breaks up with Brian because it's too much too fast. But then she comes around again later anyway, having seemingly changed her mind for no discernible reason.

The film's filled with some truly unique scenes and characters, but none of them are grounded in any sort of coherent reality. There's no throughline to the plot, just a bunch of stuff happening. And the whole subplot with the homeless guy and Brian's imagination is odd and jarring. If he's insane, this guy shouldn't have a baby.

It's one thing to do an unconventional take on a romantic comedy. New characters provide a new perspective, and interesting settings and plot turns can tweak stale genre tropes. But you can't just make a movie where everything's weird, there's no logic behind anything, and the film's just a collection of oddness slapped together on the editing table. Well, I guess you can, but what you get is GIGANTIC.