GODZILLA (1998)
Even after a second look, I (sob) still like it!
WHOOSH! The sound of all my credibility flying out the window. Like I care.
You know, when I first saw this on its opening weekend, (and I said as much in my original review), the only real surprise was how empty the theater was. Godzilla went on to be a financial disappointment, if not a failure. And needless to say, just like I predicted, it went on to become 1998's most hated movie on Usenet. (surpassing even Armageddon in the bilious hatred spewed upon it, posters possibly egged on to gloat by the movie's financial stumbling)
"Is it really just me?" I wondered. This happens to me sometimes - I become the lone defender of a big blockbuster that everybody else hates (take ID4, which I still rather like, although of course much of its charm has worn off). So, when this movie hit the dollar theater, I gave it another look.
(note to single dads: when you're taking your kids to a movie and buy them a large pop, it's considered really bad form to say "Now, would mom buy you a LARGE pop?")
And really, I've gotta stand by my initial impression. Godzilla contains no real surprises, some really unbearably awful crap, but it's still pretty fun and enjoyable, particularly on an eye-candy level. Nobody who has thusfar failed to have been impressed by director Emmerich and writer Devlin is going to find that this is the one to do it for them. And people who liked their last movie are largely likely to enjoy this one (although, like ID4, it may lose just about everything on home video, I don't know).
Plot's fairly basic - this is not one of those 90's Toho Godzilla movies where the plot is so complex with time travel and stuff like that that it loses all semblance of coherence and becomes a new kind of stupid (take the ridiculously bad Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah). No, this is an honest kind of stupid, like the original Godzilla, King Of The Monsters. Big lizard comes to New York, big lizard tries to eat New York. New Yorkers do battle with big lizard.
The Godzilla is almost all CGI here (if there were animatronics, I couldn't spot them), and it's as real-looking a CGI creation as any. Not as expressive as my (to date) favorite, Dragonheart's Draco, but it?s not like Sean Connery is doing its voice. Anyway, his design is not the waddling, man-in-a-suit-with-fins-on-his-back of the original 'zilla. This Godzilla is more genuinely dinosaurlike - like an enormous Tyrannosaurus with big, humanlike arms, a huge, Leno-like lower jaw, and big spikes on his back. And I find that I really like this design. Sure, maybe it would have been more fair to name him something else - he does not really resemble the original 'zilla at all, except that they're both giant, stomping reptiles. It might also have been more fair to have had this beast christened Godzilla by a cast that's familiar with the old Godzilla movies.
Ah, well.
This 'zilla doesn't breathe fire (although a couple of scenes where his "sonic boom breath" causes cars to explode might trick you into thinking he does), but at least he doesn't have a chameleon-like "cloaking" ability, as was falsely speculated numerous times on usenet before the film's release.
The action in this movie, despite all being absurdly improbable, is still well-done and memorable. Godzilla stomping around the labyrinthine streets of Manhattan, pursued by military helicopters which just can't seem to hit him - what can I say? I loved it! It was like the Death Star Trench battle in Star Wars, with corners. I loved the military causing more damage to New York then they could possibly hope to inflict on the lizard itself. (1998 was a bad summer for the Chrysler Building - this was the second of three movies in which it was destoyed) Also unlikely is an underwater chase where 'zilla eludes two submarines in the harbor. (this results in the destruction of one sub and the presumed killing of Godzilla. Nobody seems to notice that no giant lizard carcass is floating to the surface) It seems to me that this movie pretty much starts out with the premise of a giant iguana, brought on by nuclear testing, and doesn't make any pretense at all of asking the audience to accept anything as actually being plausible.
The performers are somewhat spotty, and mostly disappointing. Matthew Broderick does what he can with meager material, but is only memorable for a hilarious look he gives a predatory woman who leers at him suggestively. Jean Reno is pretty cool, except for one moment where he tried emulating Elvis Presley. Harry Shearer and Hank Azaria, who can normally be counted on to deliver the goods, are awful. Maria Patillo exudes some very marginal charm, but her role is so lousy that it's all for naught. Perhaps she'd fare better in a more well-written role. But the worst, by far the worst, is Michael Lerner as the perpetually eating "Mayor Ebert" and some guy I don't know as his browbeaten, Siskel-like assistant. I mean, on top of being a ridiculously long, drawn-out, ineffective and unbelievably childish joke, it's almost completely unwarranted. Sure, Siskel and Ebert gave thumbs-down to your last movie, guys. But it was a marginal thumbs-down (two and a half stars from each, I believe) - a lot of critics eviscerated it with a lot more enthusiasm. That you'd try this at all makes you look like assholes - that you'd try it with two critics who liked your movie more than most critics did makes you look like idiots.
I did like that Godzilla was portrayed as an animal, and not a monster, and thus it can be frightening and sympathetic, horrible and wonderful. Too bad that the "science" behind this Godzilla is a joke. Lemme get this straight -it took fifty years for this 'zilla to get pregnant and come on up to NYC to nest, but his kids are born pregnant and could have young of their own within a year? And never mind the absurdity of this giant thing actually TUNNELLING underneath Manhattan (where is all this dirt going?). I liked the scene with the baby Godzillas, though - although it was resolved somewhat ridiculously. Ah, well, they were just hatched - can't expect too much coordination from them quite yet.
A lot of people have complained about the extreme "wetness" of this movie - it's ALWAYS raining. This is probably because CGI effects look better when they're supposed to be wet. I don't know why that is, but that's what I keep hearing. Anyway, I rather liked the constant rain - it gave the movie a sense of urgency.
But what's with that shot that appears to be Godzilla humping an office tower? It's like that Far Side cartoon, "When dogs dream" - surely, that can't be the intent, but just as surely, somebody on the FX team had to have looked over at Emmerich and said "Uh, Roland, are you really that attached to this shot?"
It all comes to an exciting but still somewhat improbable conclusion, with Godzilla chasing our heroes around in a taxicab. Now, surely a taxi can't outrun this thing, which can go half a city block with a single step, but try letting a mouse loose in your kitchen and catching it...with your teeth. The biggest absurdity of this chase comes on the George Washington Bridge, where the filmmakers forget that this is a SUSPENSION bridge, supported from above, not below. Silly boys.
I dunno, guys - after all this time, I have to confess to still enjoying this movie, and not necessarily in the so-bad-it's-hilarious way I enjoyed Armageddon. Sure, about 45 minutes of this movie could have gone out the window, but that seems to be what blockbusters are coming to recently. What results is a big, bloated, blubbery, bombastic, and definitely overdone giant lizard movie. I didn't ask for much going in - just show me a giant lizard destroying Manhattan - and what it gave me was that, and the military destroying Manhattan too. (okay, I would have liked to have seen it eat a subway train like a big link sausage, but I never said that this was a GREAT movie)
I do have to bitch about the soundtrack, which uniformly annoys with irritating acts like the Wallflowers, and the least fun band ever assembled, Rage Against The Machine. And it's all capped off with a sodomizing of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" by Puff Daddy, aided and abetted by Jimmy Page himself. I will admit that Zeppelin's music has become increasingly annoying to my ears in the past decade (loved 'em in high school), but "Kashmir" is a song that I still treasure and would have liked to have seen remain unsullied. And crime of crimes - Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" is nowhere to be heard! Not even covered by a 90's band! C'mon, wouldn't you have loved to hear a band like Strapping Young Lad smash that baby out?
Emmerich continues to be a director I'm keeping a wary eye on - Devlin, however, appears to have reached his marginal screenwriting apex with ID4, and I can only hope that Emmerich shitcans him before they both sink together.
Yep. I still like it. You'll get no "The lights! Sob! The stars! Sob!" idiocy from me. I'm honest about my idiocy. And I liked this idiotic movie.