GODZILLA A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 1998 David N. Butterworth
**1/2 (out of ****)
When you find yourself with a monster hit on your hands, as did the producer/director team of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich a couple of years back with their summer smash "Independence Day," the biggest problem you have to face is what to do for an encore.
How do you top something as huge as "ID4"? Do you call Will Smith back for a sequel? (Last summer the Fresh Prince was riding another mid-year high with "Men in Black," so *someone* had the right idea.) Or do you shift gears completely, going for something smaller, more intimate perhaps, a character study with the emphasis on acting, rather than on action?
Or do you do what this dynamic duo did: take a legendary screen monster, tart him up for the nineties, and let him take a sizable bite out of the Big Apple?
"Godzilla" is the latest product of Devlin and Emmerich's blockbuster machine. Not the most inspirational of ideas one might say (the gigantic, fire-breathing lizard from the fifties has already been the subject of countless sequels in its homeland Japan). But, at twenty stories high, this "Godzilla" was big enough a concept to secure a mega-million dollar budget and the go-ahead from TriStar Pictures.
Borrowing conveniently, if not necessarily intelligently, from "Jurassic Park" and countless other creature features--"Alien," "Jaws," "King Kong," etc.--"Godzilla" is like Steven Spielberg's movie in a number of ways. First and foremost, "Jurassic Park"'s dinosaurs outclassed the human elements in terms of acting ability, and that's pretty much the case with "Godzilla." Nothing much has been learned or even attempted in terms of making the pint-size humans running around underfoot the remotest bit interesting.
But c'mon. Nobody goes to see "Godzilla" for the performances. This is "Raging Lizard," not "Raging Bull."
"Godzilla"'s unambitious writing is assisted by the budget-conscious casting of Matthew Broderick (who plays a "worm guy" from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) and bit-player Maria Pitillo--who's terrible--in the leads, with Jean Reno ("The Professional") and Hank Azaria (Nat the dog-walker on TV's "Mad About You") along for the ride.
All four are upstaged, perhaps deliberately so, by the rampaging reptile.
Like "Jurassic Park," "Godzilla" is bone-crushingly loud, destructive, and headache inducing. It's also dumb as nails; no surprises where the money got spent. Spielberg's 1993 film set a new standard in computer-generated animation and creature effects, and "Godzilla" has surely taken advantage of some of those advances. However, what's disappointing about the film is that most of the mayhem takes place under cover of darkness, and in a torrential rain storm, which feels like, well, a cheap shot. New York still gets trashed--the radioactively-mutated, French Polynesian lizard finds Manhattan a good place to build a nest--but it would have been nice to have seen a little more of it.
Early criticisms of the film have pointed out the mindnumbing aberrations of logic in the film's central plotting. This is true enough but no matter how brainless, "Godzilla" is still an enjoyable Crunch 'n' Munch spectacular. It does remain prudent to point out to Mr. Devlin and Mr. Emmerich, however, that as far as box office word of mouth is concerned, sighs *do* matter.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@mail.med.upenn.edu
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