Gigantic (2009)

Tagline: Quirky mumble mumble! [Note: This is not the actual tagline]

Curiosity: My special lady friend wanted to rent it during a recent Blockbuster trip. And hey, it features supporting turns from John Goodman, Ed Asner, and Zach Galifianakis.

Plot: Mattress salesman Mumbley (Paul Dano) is super duper indie and has a scientist best friend. When he sells a mattress to the wealthy and influential Al (Goodman), he gets a bargain: Al’s autistic but hot daughter Happy (Zooey Deschanel) has car sex with him the second time they meet! Now he’s just gotta figure out how to keep their relationship steady while tripping mushrooms with his dad (Asner)! And he’s trying to adopt a Chinese baby!

Reflection: Interestingly, the adoption plot point was the genesis for Gigantic’s script, but it’s the first thing I would have cut. The story’s actual focus is the relationship between Mumbley and Happy, which has its own issues, but throwing in a the unrealistic, arbitrary adoption angle is too much. Per the dialogue, Mumbley makes $700 a month; most adoption agencies require a family’s income to be at least $80,000 a year. So, uh, that’s bullshit.

Also bullshitty: Everything else. The movie piles on the quirks without stopping to make sense. Galifianakis plays a bum who assaults Dano throughout the film, and while his presence is arguably to symbolize Dano’s issues with becoming a man¸ it’s a flimsy side story at best. Why symbolically show his growth when you could, I don’t know, have a plot?

Watching Dano and Deschanel interact is painful at times. Happy has no job, prospects, or personality. Nathan Rabin once coined the phrase Manic Pixie Girl, meant to describe the hyperactive women in indie comedies who save nebbishy men. Deschanel represents the inverse of that, the Autistic Slut. She’s beautiful, but she also has no personality. In a way, she represents everything I hate: rich, maddeningly stupid, pretty fucking useless.

AND ON TOP OF THAT, I don’t know if I can enjoy Up as much having watched Asner trip balls.

Reflection #1: I take a lot of grief from the girlfriend for my love of bad movies, but I just wanna say that I picked the stellar Irish indie drama Five Minutes of Heaven while she chose Gigantic. I got taste; I just don’t employ it often.

Reflection #2: We had to literally walk through shit to get inside Blockbuster, which I think symbolizes how the company is doing perfectly. When you’re so in the red that your employees won’t clean up goose poop in front of your entrance and exit, maybe you should just close up shop.