Gigantic

"Gigantic" is uneasy from the start, it being Matt Aselton's first film, but it really falls to pieces in the end. How many tepid, "quirky" romantic comedies are we going to get from the mold-breaking, actually hilarious "Juno"? "Little Miss Sunshine" came first, but Jason Reitman's film was better. Anyways, "Gigantic" is one of these eccentric little films that was spawned from that 2007 film. It stars Paul Dano as Brian Weathersby, a typical girlfriend-less character who is plugged into the position of mattress salesman due to the lack of a realistic idea, who has one big ambition in his life: he is intent on adopting a Chinese baby (a little smear of eccentricity). He's also being repeatedly attacked by a "homeless man" (Zack Galifianakis), something the film doesn't linger on, and doesn't provide an explanation for (thus, confused IMDB users starting threads).

Well, as always, there is a love interest, and that's the overused Zooey Deschanel, who plays Happy. She comes down to the mattress store after her father (John Goodman) decides to buy an expensive Swedish mattress. A relationship begins. The odd thing is, there's no real energy. The same thing can be said for the movie. It feels oddly weary, and, in a way, drug-induced. There are a lot of plot elements that seem to have little or no effect on the film. Such as the random attacking or the studies of rats that Brian's alcoholic friend from college (Brian Avers) conducts (I suppose these exist so that there can be poor similarities drawn between rodent and homo sapian). Not to say the film is all for nothing. I'm not sure the name of the character or the actor, but there's a good performance given by Brian's meditating mattress co-worker. He supplies the only life into the film, delivering offbeat lines with a nice ease. There's not much else here.

Dano is all over the place, and Deschanel is lukewarm playing two notes: quirky girlfriend a la "(500) Days of Summer" and self-effacing girlfriend. Goodman does moderately well in a comic part as one father. The same cannot be said for Ed Asner, as Brian's old, conventional-thinking father, at least as the film fails and caves in at the end (a fellow moviegoer noted his awfulness and I think he wasn't very good either). Mary Page Keller as Happy's estranged mother delivers another standout terrible performance. I dunno. I guess nothing could have really solved Aselton's problems here. Here's a slipshod, fragmented romantic comedy that does not work save for a couple of bits. "Gigantic" (poorly-titled to say the least) is not gigantic in terms of influence on anything. The title describes only the drawbacks in Aselton's poor movie. D+