We were warned. The trailer for Godzilla had a little man cast his fishing line off a pier in N.Y. harbor. He gets a bite, and then the water starts to swell -- hundreds of yards away. The swell heads right for his spot, explosively destroying the pier as the man runs for his life. What did we just see? Godzilla was clearly beyond the range of the fisherman, and why would the creature choose to bulldoze the pier, shoving his face into the wooden pilings? The whole scene was staged so we could see the baggy-pants comic figure run from a special effect. It makes no sense. Now imagine two hours like that.
The movie starts with a trawler being attacked in the South Pacific. Later, the lone survivor lies in shock in a hospital. With a match waved in his face, the the old Japanese man weakly says: "Gojira, Gojira." This is a poor version of the "Keyser Soze" scene from The Usual Suspects, but the film editors like it enough to reprise the video tape a couple of times. Later, in Panama, huge footprints are found, crossing a plain in an unnatural, cookie-cutter manner. Next thing we know, it's closing in on New York. Showdown time, right? Wrong. A better paced film would stage skirmishes in several places, leading to a big climax in Gotham, but our boy gets there in the first half hour. The last ninety minutes cannot be non-stop action, so what do we do?
The lizard gets to stomp around a bit, in a classically Godzilla fashion, but then the military loses him. Yes, a twenty-story dinosaur just steps in off the street, "hiding" in some buildings. Think that's bad? He also gets to move around in underground tunnels. Hellooooo!? Suspension of disbelief is necessary in many Sci-Fi films, but this is a bit much. The design of the creature is pretty impossible, too, but I do not think the producers care about alienating the bio-engineers the audience. Okay, okay, who cares? We all just want to see the special effects. Good news, bad news.
There is a reasonable amount of screen time devoted to creature effects, but a lot of them are repetitive. Seeing Godzilla lope down Manhattan streets is entertaining, but we just get to see more similar scenes of Godzilla zipping around town like he was marching through K-Mart. Other scenes have a staged awkwardness about them. Some variety is provided by the little godzillas that hatch later in the film. They behave much like Spielberg's raptors, but their stalking gets overused, too. Enough action, but not much interaction.
There are some decent actors who may not welcome this entry on their resume, so let me just mention Hank Azaria, who has been doing a fine job for years, most notably in The Birdcage. His character here is a little more alive than the rest, so maybe people will learn his name. In closing, I leave you with one thought: We have been told that we get the government we deserve, and that may be true. But we certainly get the movies we deserve -- if enough people buy tickets, Hollywood does it again. The end of Godzilla has a setup for a sequel. Godzilla may be worth checking out, just to see what it looks like, but repeat viewing will send the producers the message that you are ready for that sequel. Think about it.
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