Review: Godzilla
Big, loud, and stupid: that about sum up Godzilla, a summer B-movie with A+ special effects. The point in seeing this movie is to see Godzilla destroy New York, eat some helicopters, and evade an army of heavily armed Keystone Kommandos.
If you expect more than that, then you're probably not going to like this movie. For starters, the acting and dialog is generally quite poor. Matthew Broderick is abominable as the scientist who figures out what makes Godzilla tick. He looks kind of sleepy throughout, and except for a little bit of comic relief, has all the personality of a stick. His romantic interest is a little more charming, but not so charming as to make the idea of the two of them being squished mid-kiss under the big green foot of Godzilla any less appealing. Some of the secondary characters are a little more interesting, but nothing special.
Whenever Godzilla is on the screen, the movie is quite entertaining. Unlike the lumbering, irritated, and angry Godzilla of Japanese monster movies, this Godzilla is more like an inflated lizard, possessing remarkable stop-and-turn-on-a-dime agility, and the nimbleness to hop over and through buildings. He is quite speedy, and it's fun to see him barreling around the streets of New York, out-pacing the attack helicopters sent to do him in.
While the original Godzilla was the Frankenstein monster of the nuclear age, there is no attempt to make any moral or symbolic connections in this story. The modern Godzilla is the product of French atomic tests, and swims across the world to lay eggs (thanks to the miracle of asexual reproduction) in New York. The movie suggests that reptiles often travel great distances to lay their eggs, and so their is no arguing with the movie-logic that, since he's just an extra big lizard, Godzilla would swim the extra-far distance to New York to lay its eggs. Thus, Godzilla's rampage through New York is really just misunderstood maternalism, and all the destruction is what you would expect of any giant lizard frightened and lost in downtown New York at night. There does not seem to be much reason for this change in the Godzilla story, other than, perhaps, to steer clear of more horror-style themes that might lessen its mainstream appeal?
As mentioned, the one twist on the whole Godzilla theme is the introduction of eggs that hatch into nine-foot tall baby Godzillas. This is not so much a new idea as a ``borrowing'' of the velociraptors from Jurassic Park. The movie could probably have cut the baby Godzillas with little harm to the overall plot (indeed, probably *any* 20 minute segment of this movie could have been chopped out with little noticeable effect), and certainly little harm to the overall entertainment value. There's no doubt that one big Godzilla is better than 200 small Godzillas, who hardly destroy anything, but instead just meander around, eat popcorn, and look for fish.
The plotting, as you may have guessed, is none too tight. Not many parts of this movie hold up under scrutiny, and you are setting yourself up for a big disappointment if you go see this movie prepared to think your way through it. Apparently, including advertising, this movie cost about three-hundred million dollars to make. I wonder how much they spent on the writing? In fact, I wonder if they ever considered getting, say, a writer, to write the script? The screenplay was penned by the director and the producer (Roland Emmerlich and Dean Devlin), so hiring a writer might never have crossed their minds. Whoever talked them out of also doing the special effects themselves should be congratulated.
Whether or not you like this movies is probably going to depend on whether or not you think the scenes with Godzilla are enough to make the movie worthwhile. What nobody wants is for you to go see this movie, then come back in a huff and write a review complaining about the bad plot, dialog, and acting --- that would be like going to the opera and complaining about too much singing. Instead, you should go to this expecting nothing more than seeing New York pulverized by the king of the monsters. You might still come out disappointed, but at least you started out in the right frame of mind.
-- Toby Donaldson | The more I think about her, the more I begin to University of Waterloo | believe she's the best pronoun.
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