Godzilla (PG-13)
Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Hank Azaria
Grade: C-
Everyone is all hyped up to see the latest Memorial Day bash. It’s big. It’s bad. And it’s from the director of Jurassic park, featuring several dinosaurs running around and- what’s that? That was last Memorial Day? Okay then, it’s big, it’s bad, and it features Tom Cruise doing elaborate stunts and- what’s that? Two Memorial Days ago?
My point is that films like Godzilla, as big as they may seem (because, you know, size does matter), are really a dime a dozen. While everyone is all geared up to see it now, it will be forgotten by, say, next Memorial Day, when the next kick butt movie comes out. As it is, Godzilla might just be worth forgetting. I know that summer movies are supposed to be low on quality, high on quantity, but Godzilla is really pushing the envelope. I mean really. In fact, there is virtually no plot here whatsoever, and not even the characters can display a single positive trait. While Independence Day wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, it at least had some entertaining and colorful characters. All Godzilla has going for it is a neatly designed lizard and lots and lots of destruction. But, as Roland Emmerich, the director, said in a recent interview; "all the explosions in the world won’t mean a thing if you don’t care about the characters". He just explained why Godzilla is not a good movie.
When it comes to movies like these, I’m very lenient with my definitions of good acting, solid direction, and powerful scripting. But even with these loose terms, Godzilla fails miserably. The first half hour is plotted so miserably and so confusingly that I was ready to throw in the towel, right then and there. Then Godzilla emerges from the waters, and attacks New York City in a brief ten minute sequence. This was followed by about another 45 minutes of the military trying to find Godzilla. How are you supposed to lose Godzilla? I thought he was supposed to be big! More plot holes are abound when Matthew Broderick, playing the nerdy scientist who points military types in the direction of the footprints, discovers that Godzilla is pregnant... and he found this out by using a home testing kit. The only thing deeper than these plot holes might be Godzilla’s footprint. Maybe not.
Towards the final half hour, we get our fair share of giddy destruction. This final half hour is jam packed with such fierce action, that one might be tempted to forget that the rest of the movie was a complete bore. Madison Square Garden is under seige from baby Godzillas, which bare a suspicious resemblance to a certain six foot tall dinosaur used in Jurassic Park. Then, everything blows up, and we get a breathtaking car chase sequence. Of course, it might seem odd that Godzilla can’t catch a car when he outran helicopters just an hour before... but oh well, it still looks really cool.
All of this is happening to a completely horrendous group of shallow human cronies. Matthew Broderick delivers a phoned in performance. Maria Pitillo, as the obligatory love interest, is the worst of the bunch, as she delivers her lines in this high pitched nasal whine that had me cringing down in my seat. I kept wishing that she would have a roundevous with Godzilla’s foot in the not too distant future. Hank Azaria takes a few steps down from his voice work on The Simpsons playing a poorly written camera man, and Jean Reno also steps in, struggling to find a decent cup of coffee. Reno, however, is the only member of the limited human cast that actually registers in a performance. It may be a weak performance, but by this point, anything that can be labeled as an acting job is impressive.
But enough with the humans and their desperate attempts to quell the devastation of the mutant lizard who took Manhattan by storm. If you focus just on the lizard (as the film makers obviously did) you may or may not be disappointed. The design is cool, the effects are flawless, and the destruction is breathtaking. The horrible script (what could be said about a screenplay that consists entirely of onomatopoeia?), performances, and plotline, however, may end up becoming a little too distracting to an audience who just wants to sit back, relax, and watch a huge mutant lizard take a big bit out of the Big Apple.