Gigantic. 0 Money Trains

The following is a guest review from my friend, Stephen Beckett.

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As a guest reviewer of money train quality films I was honored to be invited to review a film I would love to describe a truly awful but can't bring myself to as it was a strangely watchable and endearing film. The film in question is 'Gigantic'.

The film's basic premise is, well this is the starting point of the problem, its not clear to define what it is. It's certainly a boy meets girl movies as there is a boy. He meets a girl. And as is the norm in such situations they fall in love etc so this might possibly be the main story line.

However, our boy is a young mattress sales man who longs to adopt a baby. But he doesn't just want to adopt any baby, a Chinese baby (no I wasn't on acid when I watched this film) and you might think Hallmark Channel would rub their hands with glee at the prospect of the heart wrenching trials and tribulations of trying to go through such an adoption. But no, in this case the adoption thing is more of a side theme bordering on a non-theme. It’s more just something that is used to demonstrate the oddballness of the main character.

Then there's the love interest, and it quite possible this is why I kept watching as it came in the form of Zooey Deschanel. She plays a girl called Happy who comes into the mattress shop to collect a mattress bought by her father and promptly falls asleep on the bed in the middle of the shop. No explanation why, no questions asked she just does, and our hero waits for her to wake up and love grows from there.

And what seems to be the common theme through all of the characters is that quality that many Woody Allen films seem to have in my mind. And this is that the characters seem to exist in their own right. They are not part of a film that needs to develop them, they are not trying to live up to a sterotype that their existence and purpose in the plot requires you to realize and buy in to. In fact it is almost as if the characters fundamental aloofness to the film and what might be realistic in the real world is the only purpose in them being there. They don't seem like the actors are struggling with a crap script or story-line that they are hoping will pick up. Instead you feel that the characters have already been fully developed somewhere else off set and then just left to mumble their way through an hour and a half to see if anything good comes out of it.

So what is the main theme of the film? What is its message? Why was it made? At by the end of the film I can't answer that. There were threads of stories in here, there were things that sort of catch the attention and imagination. But at the end of the day I found myself watching it until the end more to see which of these viens of interest might become the conclusion (and for the lovely Zooey Deschannel). And in the end it was none of them, but nor was there a twist in the tail to wow you. It just kind of ended.

Money train rating. I say it is on a par with Money Train. Watchable but ultimately you are left wondering why you watched it.