Review by CJ

Director:
Roland Emmerich

Starring:
Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria

Other notable appearances:
Harry Shearer, Kevin Dunn, Nancy Cartwright, Michael Lerner

Tag line:
Size does matter

Running time:
139 minutes

Watch this if you liked:
Independence Day, Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Godzilla (2014)

Everyone’s favourite giant radioactive lizard returns in his first reboot. Godzilla makes his way to Manhattan to start a family. It’s up to biologist Nick Tatopoulos (Broderick), French agent Philippe Roaché and the national guard to stop him.

This Godzilla gets a lot of criticism, and I can see why, but I really enjoyed it. It doesn’t stick to much of the source material. The acting is a bit iffy at times. The dialogue is unintentionally hilarious at points. All in all though, Godzilla is the perfect big budget Hollywood film for the b-grade monster movie fan and has been rated as such.

There are a lot of plot holes in Godzilla. For the most part though the minutiae of the plot isn’t really paramount. There is a giant lizard destroying Manhattan and people want to stop it from doing that. Anything else is incidental.

Godzilla is a good representation of popular action films from the mid-to-late 90s. It has lots of big explosions, weapons with unlimited ammunition and an underlying love story. It’s a formula that worked well at the time and remains enjoyable today.

The special effects in Godzilla aren’t state-of-the-art, even for the time, but the creature is overall great looking. It brings to mind the creature creation in Jurassic Park. Though the eyes do bother me a smidge as the round pupils don’t feel reptilian.

Overall, I found Godzilla to be a fun movie which, while very different from its predecessors and the second reboot, was very entertaining. Despite the general disdain that surrounds this film, I recommend it for fans of b-grade monster movies and action films that don’t require much thinking.

Rating:

“You gotta be kidding me, man. We’re in his mouth. We’re IN HIS MOUTH!”