Review: Godzilla (1998)

[Yen, Homer]

"Godzilla" - A Monstrosity

If you think that a nuclear test ban treaty would be in the best
interest of everyone, then you would be correct in supporting it.
Indeed Godzilla is a creation, or mutation if you will, that is a direct
result from too much testing. The radiation fallout somehow mutates the
DNA of certain creatures which produce odd side effects. Abnormal
growth is one of those effects, as explained by Dr. Nick Tatopoulos
(Matthew Broderick), a specialist studying the effects of nuclear
fallout on animals. Tatopoulos is brought to the Caribbean where large
lizard-like footprints were discovered. "Was I just standing in a
footprint," he asks incredulously. There is more unbelievable evidence.
An ocean vessel has run aground. It appears to have been torn apart,
gigantic claw marks can be seen along the exterior of the ship, and a
traumatized survivor blurts out something to the doctors that sound like
"gaw-chill-ah".

Our anticipation grows. We want to see what we're paying for. Finally,
the overgrown reptile makes itself known by entering Manhattan. He is
an impressive beast. Cars get squashed, buildings crumble, and the
surprised citizens run for their lives. The military and Tatopoulos
hurry and set up a command post, and they begin to develop a plan to
attack it. Tatopoulos is also reunited with old college crush Audrey
(Maria Pitillo). She left him long ago, but still feels something for
the quiet scientist. As a reporter wannabee, her career is presently
going nowhere, and she sees this as an opportunity for her big story.

Tatopoulos does make a scary discovery, learning that Godzilla has come
to NYC to nest. A new species is being born, and if they don't act
fast, New Yorkers will become food for the scores of reptilian offspring
that are close to hatching. Time is running out. The military can not
find Godzilla. Tatopoulos can not find the nest. And the audience can
not find a story.

The problem with Godzilla is that it is a 30-minute effects extravaganza
stretched out into a 2-hour movie. There's a feeling of ineptness that
wafts through the movie. Military might can't bring down the creature.
Useless politicians look on in dismay. The citizens want to return back
to the city despite that fact that baby Godzillas are looking for food
and that practically every building is in need of some major repairs.
Meanwhile, Broderick's and Patillo's characters are so vapid that we
become more interested in the secondary characters, such as Animal (Hank
Azaria) who throws common sense to the wind in order to get exclusive
video footage and Phillipe Roche (Jean Reno), a mysterious character
whose purpose is kept a secret until the last 30 minutes. But that's
not to say that Godzilla isn't visually spectacular. Army helicopters
chase Godzilla through the city streets. They fire their weapons, which
manages to destroy everything except the 50-foot nuisance. Submarines
can't even catch him. And the best sequence comes at the end of the
movie when Godzilla chases the scientist and his friends who are fleeing
through the city in a taxi. Nuclear or atomic testing may have resulted
in Godzilla, but I would suspect that significant movie audience testing
would have never yielded the same mistake.

Grade: C

[Scott Renshaw]

GODZILLA (1998)
(Tri-Star)
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria.
Screenplay: Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich.
Producer: Dean Devlin.
Director: Roland Emmerich.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (intense situations, profanity, some violence)
Running Time: 135 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin have thrown down the gauntlet to film
critics...or, at the very least, to two film critics in particular. In
GODZILLA, the latest summer spectacle-cum-marketing assault from the
creators of INDEPENDENCE DAY, a mutant reptile from the South Pacific
comes to New York City on a rampage, much to the consternation of the
city's blustering mayor (Michael Lerner). A corpulent fellow with
familiar graying hair and glasses, the mayor noshes on Hershey's kisses
between campaign stops where he gives citizens his "Thumbs Up for New
York" signal. Oh, and his name is Mayor Ebert. Oh, and he has an
ineffectual, balding assistant named Gene.

I don't know why Emmerich and Devlin found this snarky fit of
retaliatory pique necessary. Certainly the negative reviews of Gene
Siskel and Roger Ebert didn't hurt the box office take of "ID4," which
somehow overcame two thumbs down to gross $300 million in North America.
GODZILLA is certain to be similarly critic-proof, pitting a massive CGI
beast against intrepid biologist Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick), his
former girlfriend and aspiring reporter Audrey Timmonds (Maria Pitillo) a
mysterious Frenchman (Jean Reno), the entire U.S. Army and the fortunes of
every other summer film standing in its path. Is critical acceptance so
important to the film-makers that doing well isn't good enough as the best
revenge?

If such is the case, here's a simple bit of advice for Emmerich and
Devlin: make better movies. GODZILLA is a baby step in the right
direction, if for no other reason than that it's more honest in its
big-budget intentions than the dopey and grandiose INDEPENDENCE DAY.
Using ALIENS and JURASSIC PARK as its models rather than the adventures of
its rubber-suited predecessor, GODZILLA takes only half an hour before the
scaly behemoth hits the Big Apple and turns midtown Manhattan into a
Jurassic parking lot. This sequence is followed by a dizzying helicopter
chase through the man-made canyons, which is followed by an underwater
encounter with submarines, which is followed by a search for what may be
the creature's nest, and so on. The sheer variety of situations insures a
consistent level of interest, while simultaneously insuring several unique
levels for the inevitable Sony PlayStation version of the game.

Whenever the film rests on human shoulders, however, you could sprain
your eyeballs from rolling them. Continuing their uncanny knack for inane
back-story, Emmerich and Devlin create a mayo-on-white-bread relationship
dynamic between Broderick and Pitillo, and a mission for Reno which makes
less and less sense every moment I think about it. The dialogue is
hopelessly feeble, the attempts at humor strained even by action movie
standards, and the characters so caricatured that Al Hirschfeld should
have drawn them. Most unforgivably, GODZILLA wastes the immense comic
talents of Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer, restricting Azaria to loyal
sidekick duty as Pitillo's cameraman and leaving Shearer to do a
half-hearted (and less animated) version of his "The Simpsons" anchorman
Kent Brockman. Even the always-appealing Broderick looks baffled by how
to be charming in such a suffocating role.

At least Emmerich sends the audience home on a high note, closing
GODZILLA with a superb sequence in which Godzilla chases a cab through the
city, eventually onto the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a sharp piece of action
film-making, and not the only one. Yet GODZILLA can't get by on its
big-ness alone; in fact, the visuals sometimes seem decidedly less than
state-of-the-art, particularly when our heroes are threatened inside
Madison Square Garden. When a blockbuster exists solely to impress you
with "you gotta see this" tricks, it's tough not to be disappointed when
you've seen the tricks before, and seen them done better. There are ways
around that disappointment, though, which Emmerich and Devlin should
ponder: Write better scripts. Create real characters. Make better
movies. Either that, or continue blaming the messengers for the way they
hold their thumbs.

On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 monster islands: 5.

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[Toby Donaldson]

Review: Godzilla

Big, loud, and stupid: that about sum up Godzilla, a summer B-movie
with A+ special effects. The point in seeing this movie is to see
Godzilla destroy New York, eat some helicopters, and evade an army of
heavily armed Keystone Kommandos.

If you expect more than that, then you're probably not going to like
this movie. For starters, the acting and dialog is generally quite
poor. Matthew Broderick is abominable as the scientist who figures out
what makes Godzilla tick. He looks kind of sleepy throughout, and
except for a little bit of comic relief, has all the personality of a
stick. His romantic interest is a little more charming, but not so
charming as to make the idea of the two of them being squished
mid-kiss under the big green foot of Godzilla any less appealing. Some
of the secondary characters are a little more interesting, but nothing
special.

Whenever Godzilla is on the screen, the movie is quite
entertaining. Unlike the lumbering, irritated, and angry Godzilla of
Japanese monster movies, this Godzilla is more like an inflated
lizard, possessing remarkable stop-and-turn-on-a-dime agility, and the
nimbleness to hop over and through buildings. He is quite speedy, and
it's fun to see him barreling around the streets of New York,
out-pacing the attack helicopters sent to do him in.

While the original Godzilla was the Frankenstein monster of the
nuclear age, there is no attempt to make any moral or symbolic
connections in this story. The modern Godzilla is the product of
French atomic tests, and swims across the world to lay eggs (thanks to
the miracle of asexual reproduction) in New York. The movie suggests
that reptiles often travel great distances to lay their eggs, and so
their is no arguing with the movie-logic that, since he's just an
extra big lizard, Godzilla would swim the extra-far distance to New
York to lay its eggs. Thus, Godzilla's rampage through New York is
really just misunderstood maternalism, and all the destruction is
what you would expect of any giant lizard frightened and lost in
downtown New York at night. There does not seem to be much reason for
this change in the Godzilla story, other than, perhaps, to steer clear
of more horror-style themes that might lessen its mainstream appeal?

As mentioned, the one twist on the whole Godzilla theme is the
introduction of eggs that hatch into nine-foot tall baby
Godzillas. This is not so much a new idea as a ``borrowing'' of the
velociraptors from Jurassic Park. The movie could probably have cut
the baby Godzillas with little harm to the overall plot (indeed,
probably *any* 20 minute segment of this movie could have been chopped
out with little noticeable effect), and certainly little harm to the
overall entertainment value. There's no doubt that one big Godzilla is
better than 200 small Godzillas, who hardly destroy anything, but
instead just meander around, eat popcorn, and look for fish.

The plotting, as you may have guessed, is none too tight. Not many
parts of this movie hold up under scrutiny, and you are setting
yourself up for a big disappointment if you go see this movie prepared
to think your way through it. Apparently, including advertising, this
movie cost about three-hundred million dollars to make. I wonder how
much they spent on the writing? In fact, I wonder if they ever
considered getting, say, a writer, to write the script? The screenplay
was penned by the director and the producer (Roland Emmerlich and Dean
Devlin), so hiring a writer might never have crossed their
minds. Whoever talked them out of also doing the special effects
themselves should be congratulated.

Whether or not you like this movies is probably going to depend on
whether or not you think the scenes with Godzilla are enough to make
the movie worthwhile. What nobody wants is for you to go see this
movie, then come back in a huff and write a review complaining about
the bad plot, dialog, and acting --- that would be like going to the
opera and complaining about too much singing. Instead, you should go
to this expecting nothing more than seeing New York pulverized by the
king of the monsters. You might still come out disappointed, but at
least you started out in the right frame of mind.

--
Toby Donaldson | The more I think about her, the more I begin to
University of Waterloo | believe she's the best pronoun.

[James Kendrick]

"GODZILLA" (USA, 1998)
A Film Review by James Kendrick
**1/2 (out of ****)

Director: Roland Emmerich || Screenplay: Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich (based
on the character Godzilla, owned and created by the Toho Company Ltd.) || Stars:
Matthew Broderick (Dr. Niko Tatopoulos), Jean Reno (Philippe Roache), Maria
Pitillo (Audrey Timmonds), Hank Azaria (Victor "Animal" Palotti), Kevin Dunn
(Colonel Hicks), Michael Lerner (Mayor Ebert), Harry Shearer (Charles Caiman),
Arabella Field (Lucy Palotti), Vicki Lewis (Dr. Elsie Chapman) || MPAA Rating:
PG-13

More than forty years and some two-dozen movies after he first raised his huge
reptilian head in the 1954 Japanese monster flick "Gojira," Godzilla is back,
courtesy of the director / producer team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, the
sci-fi twosome that last blew theater speakers out with massive alien
destruction in "Independence Day" (1996). Leaner, meaner, faster, and sleeker,
this late 90's reinterpretation of the normally dumpy, rubbery monster is
certainly a sight to behold, although his sheer size is almost too overwhelming.

Even though his earlier incarnations were laughably fake, the Godzilla of the
original Japanese movie had personality. In fact, audiences took such a liking
to him, that most of his later films switched him to the role of the good guy,
where instead of destroying Tokyo for mean-spirited purposes, he did it in the
services of saving the city folk from other monsters far more fearsome.

Devlin and Emmerich's Godzilla is no such creature. The result of French nuclear
testing in the South Pacific, he's a bad-to-the-bone animalistic aberration of
nature who rampages through New York City not once, not twice, but three times,
laying to waste such landmarks as the Chrysler Building, the Brooklyn Bridge,
and Madison Square Garden. And, whatever Godzilla doesn't destroy, the U.S. Army
does in its often ill-fated attempts to kill him.

Much has been made about what Godzilla looks like. The advertisements, which
have been running for a year now, purposely kept his physical look a secret (I
already knew what he looked like before I saw the movie, not because I have
inside connections, but because I saw a toy replica on the rack in a grocery
store several days ago — so much for the big unveiling). The new Godzilla, which
is brought completely to life by impeccable digital imagery, looks like a
combination of a really big T-Rex and the Rancor from "Return of the Jedi."
Square-headed and very nimble, he's so large the camera can rarely contain his
entirety in one shot.

The script, more or less written by Devlin and Emmerich, is nothing but a thin
rack on which to hang the non-stop orgy of destruction. In the leads, the
screenplay offers us two thoroughly blasé characters portrayed by Matthew
Broderick and Maria Pitillo, both of whom act so chipper and wide-eyed in their
amazement that they become the film's chief liability.

Broderick plays Dr. Niko Tatopoulos, and before you ask, "where the hell did
they come up with that clumsy name," it was borrowed from Patrick Tatopoulos,
the designer of the new Godzilla. Broderick is a scientist working for the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission by studying the growth effects of the Chernobyl
accident on earth worms. Pitillo plays Audrey Timmonds, Broderick's ex-college
sweetheart, now an aspiring TV newscaster (aren't they all in the movies these
days?)

The screenplay also throws in a lot of incompetent military personnel, Jean Reno
("The Professional," "Mission: Impossible") as a charismatic French secret
service agent, and Michael Lerner as the obnoxious Mayor Ebert, who is most
likely an unsubtle stab at movie critic Roger Ebert (Lerner is even seen briefly
in an election advertisement poster with the patented "thumbs up"). One of the
more likable characters is Victor "Animal" Palotti (Hank Azaria), a gung-ho TV
cameraman who has more personality that Broderick and Pitillo combined.

However, any and all of these characters function as little more than human ants
constantly running from Godzilla's carnage. And what carnage it is. Starting
with an early attack on a large Japanese ship, Godzilla proceeds to pull a fleet
of three American fishing boats under the sea, before exploding out of the
Hudson River and demolishing most of New York. For those who don't particularly
care for the Big Apple, watching it get tossed and bashed by the giant lizard is
a vicarious treat for the first fifteen minutes. But destruction without real
emotional implication gets tiresome after a while, which is all that fills most
of "Godzilla's" overlong running time.

About two-thirds of the way through the movie, Emmerich suddenly switches gears
and develops a long sequence inside the ruins of Madison Square Garden that is
almost worthy of the hype surrounding "Godzilla." Ironically, the scene doesn't
include the titular big guy, but rather 200 snapping offspring. It turns out the
Godzilla has some amazing reproductive capabilities, and he decided to make the
Knicks' home court into his personal nest.

Broderick and Co. arrive on the scene just in time for all the eggs to hatch,
releasing some 200 nine-foot Godzilla clones that look, move, and sound almost
exactly like the velociraptors in Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" (1993). The
chase inside the Garden plays like a combination of the scenes in the visitor's
center in "Jurassic Park" and queen's nest sequence in James Cameron's "Aliens"
(1986). It's tribute to the superiority of those films over this one that
"Godzilla's" best scenes are almost directly stolen from them.

But, even if they aren't particularly original, they're still extraordinarily
effective. The baby Godzillas exude real menace, and the entire sequence inside
Madison Square Garden is suspenseful, creatively staged, and creates a palpable
sense of danger — basically everything that had been missing from the first half
of the film.

©1998 James Kendrick

____________________________________________
Visit "Charlie Don't Surf!"
an eclectic collection of film reviews by James Kendrick
http://www.bigfoot.com/~jimkendrick || E-mail: jimke...@bigfoot.com

[Joe Lore]

Just wanted to give my 2 cents on the new Godzilla film. I've been a
Godzilla fan all my life and currently own every film from Godzilla (1954)
to Godzilla Vs. Destroyah (yes that's the correct spelling).

This will be a spoiler for the new movie as well as the original films so be
forewarned!!

I entered the theater with an open mind but with high hopes. All and all I
was amazed, amused and disappointed.

I was amazed by the special effects. Godzilla's new look was very different
and surprising but not all that bad. It is not truly Godzilla but an
interesting likeness that was very lifelike. Off the top of my head I do not
remember the special effects group who did Godzilla (please forgive me) but
they did an OUTSTANDING job!!

I was amused both in the entertained sense and the sarcastic sense by the
script. It was mediocre at best. Many "Jurassic Park"'ish references. The
baby Godzilla's almost looked like the Raptors with bad skin. But again,
very lifelike and well done effects.

The script dragged on a bit in the middle and finally picked up again. This
tended to leave moments where we begin to realize how long the film is.

The disappointment is, The Killed Godzilla!!! As a LONG time fan I have seen
many BAD scripts end fairly well. Yes a baby survived which ensures us of a
sequel but, They Killed Godzilla!!!

I agree it mirrors the original film which leads off to virtually no sequel,
and the sequel does a horrible job of leaving off...but THEY KILLED
GODZILLA!!!

I will admit I am a sucker for the "The monster is only trying to procreate"
theme and it got me. When Godzilla was lying there near death and we heard
the heartbeat stop my eyes welled up uncontrollably...They Killed Godzilla..

Ok enough with the "They Killed Godzilla" My point is this. Toho has run a
highly successful series of Godzilla films while keeping Godzilla alive and
well to fight again. I think the ending could have been done better. Such as
having Godzilla fall to the ground but crawl to the river and swim out to
sea. Here the scientists could say "He has gone off to heal himself. He will
be back" To which the General replies "I only hope we're ready for him" To
which one of the others reply "Yes and we'll have bigger guns"

That's just a small example of what "could" have been done. It truly saddens
me to see such a cult movie icon get downed that way and I think most other
"die hard" Godzilla fans will agree.

So as we mourn the passing of the "new" "other" Godzilla we prepare for the
new Toho release where the Original Godzilla will strike again.

Cheers

Joe Lore

[Matthew Brissette]

So yeah , I saw Godzilla today. What did I think of it? It's not a good
movie , neither is it a bad movie , nor does it enter the category of
average movies. Godzilla resides in that gray area between watchable
movies and flicks you'd wish the big G would squish , repeatedly. How
best to describe it to you? It's what I like to call at nitpick flick ,
any moron can figure out a thousand ways it could have been better. And
make no mistake , altough it is quite enjoyable , Godzilla could have
been sooooo much better. But don't take this the wrong way , you will
have a good time while watching Godzilla , but afterwards you will bitch
about it on the way home.

Case in point:

The big G himself. Now that the movie as finally been released we now
understand why they only show his legs and feet in the trailers. Why?
Because the special effects stop being flawless above the hips. Mind you
, 90% of the population of the earth will not notice the flaws in the
effects. In fact , these are some really special special effects , but
anybody with a sharp pair of eyes will see that sometimes Godzilla has
this aura around certain areas of his body , a surefire sign that the
effects guys had trouble blending in Godzilla with his surroundings.
This is mostly hardcore nitpicking and i'm sure most people did not
mind , but for person's like me who know how effects are made it caused
just a teensy eensy little problem.

What really drags the movie down are the "actors" , please note the
quotation marks used in this case to signify sarcasm. I will immidiately
defend myself against the attacks I will most certainly receive from
fans of Jean Reno: he was the only good actor in the movie and I am
ashamed to mention his performance in the same paragraph as the
following:

Matthew Broderick plays Matthew Broderick , this guy ( note how I no
longer use the term actor ) has no range , I was never sure if he wanted
to hunt down the creature and kill it or save it in the name of science.
( Spoiler follows ) When they discover the Godzilla eggs near the end ,
I kept waiting for Broderick to stop the French guys from blowing up the
eggs , he had this look on his face like a wounded puppy dog who just
lost his favorite toy. I should have realized that's how he always looks
, never mind that Godzilla is centimeters in front of him or that a
dozen babyzillas are chasing him.

Speaking of the babyzillas , this is what really ruined the movie for
me. I have never seen such an obvious ripoff of a previous movie , I
have seen copies , homages , remakes , and several ripoffs before but
this takes the cake. I went to see Godzilla , not The Lost World ,
because there is no mistaking the fact that these are Velociraptors.
They look nearly the same , run , jump , bash and scream in the same
manner. Two major differences: the Raptors were done way better and were
ten times more dangerous.

When the babyzillas are chasing Broderick and co' ( get em' guys! ) the
effects break down in an hurry , you feel as if you could walk right
through one of these creatures , they look that fake. In fact , if you
look closely when they are breaking down doors you can see that the
impacts don't quite happen at the same moment a baby rams the door.
Another small detail ( even I have to admit that this is way beyond
nitpicking but...) these things weight , oh , let's say half a ton. At
that weight , even if those were jawbreakers on the floor they would
have shattered and not tripped the creatures.

I was wrong , now I know what really ruins the movie: the little blond
chihouaha hanging around Broderick for most of the movie. Good god ,
that woman was annoying. Wait till you see her "big emotional scene"
were she as to cry her eyes out because she betrayed her ex-boyfriend
which she nearly married eight years ago. ( Also known as a useless
sub-plot meant only to keep people from falling asleep between Godzilla
attacks...so much for that idea.)

I don't understand Emmerich and Devlin , they had some inspired casting
for Independence Day and now this! In this kind of movie you need heroes
that are bigger than life , Wil Smith anybody? And don't tell me actors
aren't important in effects filled movies because that's just not true ,
in fact good actors could have saved that infinitely long half hour
after the initial Godzilla rampage. Did I mention Hank Azeria? Well , he
was okay but not good , altough he deserves an oscar by comparison.

And like in most giant monster movies , the army was quite pathetic in
destroying Godzilla. Especially the helicopter pilots , I understand why
the missiles missed but come on! With ten helicopters on it's tail you'd
think that one of them could aim that gatling cannon with better
acuracy! Speaking of the pilots , are these people trying to crash into
each on purpose or what? They keep bunching together like a swarm of
hornets , I think I remember one pilot yelling to another because he
almost got shot down by friendly fire.

And don't these submarine Captains know of a little thing called
countermeasures? You know , those little thingies subs fire to confuse
incoming torpedoes? I know they were busy dodging Godzilla but it takes
half a second to yell out "Launch countermeasures!" Speaking of stupid:
"Send out the divers to recover the body!" Excuse me? Never mind the
fact that should have kept shooting , but exactly how are frogmen
supposed to recover the body? Steroids?

Speaking of weight , I may be wrong about this but I really doubt that
bridge could support Godzilla's weight , never mind the fact that he was
jumping and stomping all over the place. And while we're on the subject
of chances of survival: three dozen babyzillas , four actors , only way
to go is straight through them...and nobody loses an arm or something?
Oy!

I know , I know , I am really bitching right now but I oh so wished
Godzilla could have been a better movie. I liked Godzilla , I enjoyed
Godzilla , but it is also a movie brought down by a lack of fresh ideas
, horrible actors and dozens of little things that any person could have
fixed. Don't let this stop you from seing Godzilla ( as if it will ) ,
but be prepared for a bit of a disapointment and a feeling of déja vu.

Rating: 2 and a half out of 5 for: Blowing up Madison Square Garden ,
one excellent jump by Godzilla , stupid actors playing stupid characters
, "sharpshooters" ( snicker ) , Velocirap...uh , and wishing Godizlla
would put the blond ditz out of her misery.

[Chris T. Dias]

GODZILLA

STARRING: Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Hank Azaria, Maria Pitillo,
Michael Lerner, Harry Shearer
WRITTEN BY: Dean Devlin & Roland Emmerich
DIRECTED BY: Roland Emmerich

**OVERVIEW**

...No Firebreath...

There are two things I realized that are different with this
Godzilla...let's get it out right now. No Firebreath is one thing.
This could prove very useful to those pesky helicopters. The other is
his legs, not erect like a man's but more like a chicken's. Because
of that, he walks sloped over, unlike the man-in-the-rubber-suit of
the original films.

So...let us begin with Godzilla. After a very clever introduction, a
Japanese fisher gets sliced in half. Then reports from the
Philippines point that a creature took a troll across an island and
dove back into the water. The military soon calls upon the
government's top nuclear research agent to investigate the strange
residue left behind the creature's imprints. This is where Nick
Tatopoulos (which no one-can pronounce), no doubt named after the man
who designed the new creature, Patrick Tatopoulos, enters. He
believes this creature has mutated from a previous reptilian species
by fallout from a French nuclear testing site nearby. This mutation
soon destroys a trio of fishing boats. The path points towards a
destination: The city that never sleeps...

Okay, Manhattan for those not paying attention to the trailers.

The creature jumps the pier and rides into the island, causing mayhem
and grief for all, including its Mayor, Ebert. Okay...first of all,
he looks like the guy (played by Lerner). He has that goofy "thumbs
up" slogan, PLUS his aid is named Gene...the whole joke is as subtle
as a 2x4 in the face...let's move on.

In an amazingly short time, all of Manhattan is evacuated. Even the
death count here seems very minor and virtually no one is seen on
screen getting killed but we are assuming some get stomped. Course,
the media jumps on it...A cameraman, nicknamed "Animal" (Azaria in a
scene stealing performance) gets a shot and fear spreads quickly. By
nightfall, all of Manhattan is more or less clear. Now, I don't care
but if they could do that, call up those Deep Impact people, you would
probably save a lot more in that movie.

Night--and the place is deserted--a fantastic battleground for a ten
story tall monster...without firebreath. Another figure trying to
cash in the popularity is Audrey Timmonds (Pitillo). She happens to
be an ex girlfriend of Nick. She meets up with him in the military
quarantine and steals his information for a story break, which is then
promptly stolen by Audrey's mean boss, Charles Caimen
(Shearer...that's two from the Simpsons...Azaria being the other one).
She is bummed, and very depressed since Nick lost his job with the
military because of the leaked story. Out on his luck, he moves to
leave town, but is kidnapped by the enigmatic Phillippe Roche (Reno as
great as ever). Roche is a man who claims to be from the insurance
company when he first appears but is eventually revealed to be from
the French Secret Service, trying to clean up the mess his country
began.

He believes Nick's latest finding, a finding that the US military
doesn't endorse: That this creature (named Godzilla for the totally
inept) was born, and currently is, pregnant. Perfect, above all
things, this creature is a tribble as well. They decide to venture
forth into the deserted Manhattan to locate the Lizard's nest.
Course, as Nick and Phillipe sneak back into town, A pesky reporter
and her freaky reporter follow them in...

Did I mention there was a big lizard In this movie...Oh yes, and the
army sends everything they got against this thing...That includes
seemingly a hundred attack choppers, jets, submarines, tanks and lots
of expendable soldiers with machine guns. All they have to believe in
is what Arnold said once in a movie, "If it bleeds, we can kill it."

**REVIEW**

Its just too bad they couldn't get access to the Z-1000 Attack
Hovercraft from Godzilla 1985. Could have taken care of this creature
early.

I loved the opening of this film. It was craftily made with
cleaver old fashion photography of French nuclear testing under the
observing eye of some Iguanas. It then moves into introducing its
characters, some of the best the Devlin / Emmerich have made. The
film doesn't focus on four or five groups, just one. Unfortunately,
they can't seem to put that much skill into writing that one plot.
When the film discusses the creature, the town, or the major plot
points to resolve problems, the film works well. However when the
film lowers itself to discussing the personal problems of its
characters, the films stalls. I mean who cares. The writing is so
immature when dealing with the romance of two characters as a ten
story tall creature destroys New York.

I felt that Timmonds and Tatopolous to be very boring. Just get back
to the action. I wasn't interested in Sam Neil's relationship with
Laura Dern in Jurassic Park. Who cares? The other characters are
great. I love Reno's character and Azaria steals his scenes. They
make sense and if the film concentrated on them reacting rather than
dealing with their personal lives, the film would work a lot
better.... But when the action starts, it totally powers the simple
script.

The first appearance of the creature is simple. I must admit, I miss
the erect rubber suit creature. This new one looks too much like an
oversized raptor...and thus spawns the only real problem with e
action. The film has some great scenes as choppers race down the fast
moving Godzilla through the streets at night. And there are some
submarine sequences that really caught my eye. And the climax is to
die for, but near the end of the film, as the group searches for the
rest, there are some sequences that seem taken right out of Jurassic
Park. I have seen these before and didn't really care to see them
again. We only care about the big destruction, and I am happy to say
the film delivers, kudos to the advertising campaign that kept so many
scenes out of the commercials. It left so much more to see. I really
enjoyed this thrill ride of a film.

Is it better than ID4? I have to say yes. It is not as funny
(because of the lack of Will Smith) but the action is much more
exciting with more screams and yelps from the audience. I found
myself following along the fun and clapping at the destruction of the
town. Godzilla was an exciting film and worth seeing twice, just as
long as you don't mind the petty love story...and no
firebreath...jeez...

TOP POINTS

+AMAZING SPECIAL EFFECTS
+FANTASTIC ACTION SCENES

PLUSES
+ACTING

MINUSES
-POOR LOVE SUBPLOT
-JURRASIC PARK SECTION TOO FAMILIAR

RATING: * * * * stars out of 5

DEMOGRAPHIC: Godzilla has very little onscreen violence but there is
wall to wall destruction. People get crushed but you don't seem them
after. There is not hefty violence beyond that. Honestly, Godzilla
has probably the lowest body count of all the creature flicks of the
same name. In those films, the town is not luckily deserted when the
mayhem begins...I still think that is very peculiar...

-- --- Chris T. Dias --- "The man who runs with scissors."

[Walter Frith]

A movie review by Walter Frith

Member of the 'Internet Movie Critics Association'
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/5713/index.html

Cheer up. This time you won't see the actors lips moving before or
after their out of synch dialogue. This production of 'Godzilla' is a
high tech marvel from the team of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich who
brought 'Independence Day' to movie screens in 1996.

Inspired by the revolutionary special effects of 1993's 'Jurassic Park',
'Godzilla', plain and simple, is a popcorn movie that is beyond the high
brow realm of major criticism and is one of those movie's that despite
the rigid criticism it will receive for its uneven concoction of action
and character fluff, still offers the pleasant and familiar cliches of
an electrifying monster movie.

A geographical map is displayed during the film's opening credits as we
see the South Pacific location of French Polynesia and the nuclear tests
being conducted by the French government in and around that region that
have been going for some 30 odd years or so and the genetic mutant of
the experiments gone awry is, or course, 'Godzilla'. The first sign of
his existence comes at the expense of a Japanese boat crew who get
demolished one night in the Pacific Ocean and a member of the French
Secret Service (Jean Reno), confronts one of the survivors who describes
the eerie tale on videotape which later comes out. The initial story is
also set up through a scene in Chernobyl, Ukraine where a nuclear
containment specialist named Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) is
measuring the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster on earth worms and
discovers that a number of them are 17% larger than they were were
before the nuclear fallout and later applies this theory of nuclear
contamination to explain the Godzilla phenomenon. Nick is re-assigned
from his current exploration of Chernobyl to other locations where signs
of the giant lizard appear and eventually come to fulfillment in the Big
Apple. New York City is the perfect playground for the monster as
Manhattan is an island where the creature can roam at will on either
land or in the water.

The New York characters are stereotypical of the city that never
sleeps. An aspiring and bubbly attractive young t.v. reporter named
Audrey Timmonds (Maria Pitillo) and a camera man name Animal (Hank
Azaria) from the station she works at, work together despite the
objections of Animal's wife Lucy (Arabella Field) to get involved in the
Godzilla frenzy when all hell breaks loose. Audrey is perceived as a
sex toy by a sleazy local anchor man (Harry Shearer) who refuses to give
her the big break in television reporting she so desperately wants. She
and Matthew Broderick's character were old college flames who meet each
other during the breaking story and they rekindle their feelings for
each other in a somewhat awkward manner.

The NYC Mayor (Michael Lerner) and the leader of a crack military
operation (Kevin Dunn) exchange sparring words of conflict over the
handling of Godzilla's destruction and the movie glides along, somewhat
unevenly, during the attempts at dialogue the all around characters
exchange.

There are many scenes delivered in much of the same way they were
showcased in 'Independence Day'. There are several scenes where the
military men go after the beast by air power and bombard it with
gunfire, missiles and other tactics as we witnessed in the attack of the
mother ship in ID.

Roland Emmerich directs 'Godzilla' in a typical way we've seen from time
to time where the creator doesn't want you to see the beast in its full
form as Steven Spielberg demonstrated in 'Jaws' where the shark wasn't
completely visible until well into its running time. We see Godzilla's
tail, his foot, his eye, his head, all edited in quick and scattered
shots of temptation before the big show. His rampage through New York
City is furious and heavy as several landmark buildings are destroyed
and Godzilla marks his territory with the next generation of lizards in
the form of unhatched eggs which work their way into the plot rather
well to give the film some meaning in its second half.

The screenplay by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin isn't really clever
enough to offer any real surprises. The film is an all out display of
big studio dollars spent during the first of many summer months to draw
a large crowd of movie goers who hopefully will enjoy a film that based
on its well established name, will self by itself.

OUT OF 5 > * * * 1/2

Visit FILM FOLLOW-UP by Walter Frith
http://home.netinc.ca/~wfrith/movies.htm

[Serdar Yegulalp]

Godzilla (1998)
* *
A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp
Copyright 1998 by Serdar Yegulalp

CAPSULE: A decent screenplay does matter.

The most depressing thing about GODZILLA, the over-touted Dean Devlin/Roland
Emmerich remake of the rubber-monster classic, is how little it exploits its
own resources. It's itching with possibilities that never get used. The
problem is, I have to review what's on the screen -- a noisy, witless, tame,
lame, underwritten story that bulks overlong and features disturbingly
inconsistent visuals. It's moderately entertaining, but God help you if you
start realizing how thin it is while it's still on screen.

The movie's opening credits are inventive, giving us lizard eggs that are
witnesses to various nuclear tests. But it doesn't develop that kind of
cleverness elsewhere: we get not one but two teams of trawlers dragged down
into the ocean, in sequences that are at first uninvolving and then
ultimately repetitive. Then there is the creature itself, which veers
between very convincing, sort of convincing, and ridiculously unconvincing
-- not just in terms of what it can or can't do, but in how it's presented.
The effects people also play dirty pool with parallax and perspective a lot:
when the thing needs to be closer, it's closer; when it needs to be a long
way off, poof! it's on the other side of town. Idiotic. (When it dives into
the Hudson, for instance, it makes a splash about the size of someone
throwing a van into the water.)

We don't have a lot to play with in the character department, either. Nick
Tatapulous (played by Matthew Broderick, who looks about as Greek as I do
Chinese) is a researcher into animal mutations caused by radioactive wastes,
and when we first see him he's jamming electrodes into contaminated
Chernobyl soil to get worms to come to the surface. Cute. He gets tapped on
the shoulder to help determine what's been causing all of these ships to
vanish, and puts the pieces together so quickly I can only assume he snuck a
peek at the script. Couldn't he have let the rest of the cast in on it, too?

Broderick is joined by a bevy of other actors -- most of them not given
anything substantial to do. Jean Reno is the best of the bunch, playing an
insurance investigator who has his own agenda. He is smart and canny and
resourceful, and we like him instinctively. His funniest, best moment has
him giving sticks of gum to a gaggle of fake Army troops to make them look
more "American", and we buy it. He deserves his own movie.

There's also Hank Azaria's cameraman character, Animal, who starts off
promisingly but winds up getting used merely for mugging and reaction shots;
more wasted potential. But the biggest waste is Michael Learner as Mayor
Ebert, in a role that serves no purpose except to slow the story down and
give a vehicle for the filmmakers to take cheap shots at two film critics
they don't like. The first time was funny; by the seventh or eighth, I was
too exhausted to wince.

I mentioned the worms and the chewing gum. Funny how the movie can cough up
neat little asides like that to flesh out what is basically a lame story --
in other words, at no time did anyone try to apply the same kind of manic
spirit to the movie AS A WHOLE.

Why didn't we have the mayor, for instance, turn out to be a former head of
the transportation department who knows the subways intimately, which would
give him a reason to exist (and would give them something else to film other
than all those soldiers crawling around down there and acting like idiots)?
Why didn't they take Animal and the stupidly conceived female journalist
character and fuse them into a more interesting composite (since there's
nothing they do that couldn't be handled more economically and interestingly
by one full-fledged person)? Why didn't they make Godzilla's death(s) more
creative -- by having him, say, knock a building over onto himself and break
his own neck? I could go on, but you get the idea. And this was nothing but
stuff people were tossing out on the way home in the car.

For a two-hour-twenty-minute running time, they stretch and huff and puff
and find an incredible number of ways to justify the length. And in the end,
I asked myself if I'd had fun, and all I could think about was how the
massively expensive soundtrack had given me a toothache out of sheer volume.

FOOTNOTE: Over the closing credits, we get an industrial-rap remix of Led
Zeppelin's "Kashmir". Fitting irony, since Page and Plant's publishing
company was called, after all, Superhype.

[Berge Garabedian]

GODZILLA
RATING: 6.5 / 10 --> So-so

Review Date: May 20, 1998
Director: Roland Emmerich
Writers: Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich
Producer: Dean Devlin
Actors: Matthew Broderick as Nick Tatopoulos
Hank Azaria as Animal
Jean Reno as Phillippe Roche
Genre: Science-Fiction / Thriller
Year of Release: 1998

>From the makers of INDEPENDENCE DAY (6.5/10) comes the umpteenth remake
of the original monster movie classic Godzilla. I believe that there
have been over sixty variations of this picture filmed through its
various mutations, but this one claims to be the one that cost the most
clams: $140 million worth.

PLOT:
Nuclear radiation turns an ordinary lizard into a gigantic 500-foot+
beast. The giant monster roams into New York City, and consequently
terrifies and squashes many of its "innocent" inhabitants. The US
military, along with a nuclear radiation specialist (Broderick) are out
to stop this freakish abnormality from taking over. Mayhem and crazy
special effects ensue.

CRITIQUE:
"Been there, seen that" was my main reaction after the conclusion of
this film. This kind of picture may have been incredibly inventive and
original a few years back (think JURASSIC PARK (7.5/10)), but now it's
nothing more than a rehashed carnival of special effects. Okay,
admittedly the special effects are still quite spectacular, taped
alongside their partnered action sequences, but the crust of any film
still lies in its overall story line, and this pie just doesn't have
much cream to it, boys and girls. Standard characters conveying
contrived movie feelings through icky standard dialogue. The story is
basically this: Monster bad. Kill monster. And that's about it.

Other than that, the writers attempt to squeeze in another cheezy
romance between two bad actors (Broderick's career peaked and ended at
FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF (8/10), give up the day job, dude, you're
done!), and a bunch of characters who have to disagree with the
theories of the "always-right" scientist. Smack that all together, and
you've got yourself another special effects airball of a movie! By the
way, is there any reason why the President of the United States of
America didn't get involved in this giant beast's destructive path
through New York City, while the French secret service made this
mission their top priority in life?? (Okay, so they kind of explain the
French involvement, but where the heck was the Prez through this
unthinkable disaster??).

For movie fanatics, watch for the fun-poking of Siskel & Ebert
throughout the entire picture by the way of Mayor Ebert and his
assistant Gene. In the end, the film does lengthen itself out by means
of another standard monster flic scenario ("Someone" re-emerges. Guess
who? Yawn.), and does end with the perpetual open door to an obvious
sequel, but that's about it. If you're in the mood to see a crazy
monster running loose in New York City and nothing more, then check
into this movie. If you're looking for something more interesting and
original to watch, I suggest you skip this over-hyped puppy, and warm
your nachos for several other interesting salsas to come on this
summer's fiesta line-up of films.

Little Known Facts:
Jean Reno's real name is Juan Moreno. He was born in Casablanca,
Morocco.
Harry Shearer does the TV Simpsons' voices of Charles Montgomery Burns,
Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Seymour Skinner, Otto Mann and many
others. Hank Azaria does the Simpsons' voices of Apu
Nahasapeemapetilon, Moe Szyslak, Police Chief Clancy Wiggum, Comic Book
Guy, Dr. Nick Riviera, and many others.
Matthew Broderick is married to fellow thespian Sarah Jessica Parker,
and is known for being the original choice to play Alex P. Keaton
(later played delectably by Michael J. Fox) in the long-running NBC
sitcom Family Ties. Broderick declined the proffered role, however,
because his father was dying of cancer in New York City at the time and
the job would have necessitated a move to Los Angeles.
--------------------------------------------
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--------------------------------------------

(c) 1998 Berge Garabedian

[Nathaniel R. Atcheson]

Godzilla (1998)

Director:  Roland Emmerich
Cast:  Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Hank Azaria, Maria Pitillo, Michael
Lerner, Harry Shearer, Arabella Field, Philippe Bergeron
Screenplay:  Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich
Producers:  Dean Devlin
Runtime:  139 min.
US Distribution:  TriStar
Rated PG-13:  disaster violence, language

By Nathaniel R. Atcheson (na...@pyramid.net)

A fellow critic, in his review of Godzilla, states his belief that his
opinion will not sway readers' decisions whether or not to see the
film. I agree with that submission, although I think there will be a
lot of people out there reading reviews of Godzilla, wanting to see how
many critics agree or disagree with their opinions on what is perhaps
this summer's most-anticipated film. Based on this assumption, I am
going to express my opinion in a manner which will hopefully convey that
I feel passionate about the words I have written here.

I hate Godzilla. It's a film so bad that words like "incompetent" and
"wasteful" lose their meaning. Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin are such
hacks, so devoid of talent and vision, that they simply throw away what
seem to be good ideas for films. I was hesitant to admit this belief
until now: Stargate is a mediocre wannabe sci-fi action flick with a
few interesting aspects and a nice cast. Independence Day, their "best"
film, is exciting for the first half and at least in good humor (even if
it doesn't know it's awful) through the ludicrous and insipid second
half. Godzilla, however, begins at the bottom of the "mediocre"
category and spirals quickly downward into a wretched pit of bad special
effects, shameless unoriginality, and possibly the worst script ever to
plague a film whose budget could retire the national debt.

In fact, there's almost nothing good to say about Godzilla. There's
one scene that has Godzilla stomping full speed around the streets of
New York in pursuit of a taxi which contains our heroes; this segment is
a good action sequence. Some of Matthew Broderick's lines are
fashionably executed, for he seems to be the only actor in the cast who
is fully aware of the fantastically bad dialogue that Emmerich and
Devlin have penned. That, my friends, is the list of positives. Seeing
as how the film is well over two hours, and that one scene and a few
lines of dialogue don't exactly fill the entire frame, I must now
explain to you that Godzilla is not just an intense disappointment, but
probably the worst film of 1998.

Maybe I should begin with a summary (though I have considered not doing
this, for it is apparent that I will have given the film more thought
than the two men responsible for it). The film begins with an
insightful look at a bunch of lizards getting irradiated. Later, big
cargo ships and smaller fishing boats are ravaged and pulled
underwater. So, we are introduced to Nick Tatopoulos (Broderick), a
worm specialist who is called in to investigate some really big
footprints on a tropical island. Pretty soon, the huge radioactive
lizard is taking his first steps in Manhattan, having fun knocking down
buildings and screaming at things that are, perhaps, too small for it to
see clearly (such as human beings). Later, it turns out that Nick's
skills as a worm specialist are very helpful, for Godzilla is burrowing
under the city and laying eggs in Madison Square Garden.

That's the story. It doesn't sound too bad, and I think a pretty
decent summer blockbuster could have emerged from it, as opposed to this
film, which unsuccessfully aspires to be referred to as "incompetent"
and "wasteful." I suppose it's time to be concrete about all this, so
I'll begin with the least of its problems. First, the soundtrack is
bad. The music by David Arnold is not the least bit exciting or
original, and is often very mushy and sentimental in parts that are
supposed to be touching.

There are no characters, and most of the acting is extremely mediocre
(not that anyone cares about acting in a film like this). Broderick, as
I said, has his moments, because he understands the awfulness of the
dialogue. Kevin Dunn is the worst of the bunch, playing the Head
Military Guy who refuses to listen to reason and just wants to shoot
missiles at Godzilla, and ultimately cause more damage to the city than
the creature itself. Maria Pitillo, in one of the pointless subplots,
plays Nick's ex-girlfriend, and she tries very hard to change her facial
expression on several occasions. Hank Azaria plays a cameraman and is
far less interesting than he was in any other film he's ever been in.
Most perplexing is the presence of Jean Reno, who is part of a pointless
and time-consuming subplot regarding the French government (although I
do like it when he says, "Running would be a good idea," with a straight
face).

The rest of the problems with this wad of cinematic refuse are
equivalent in intensity and importance, so I'll just lay into the script
first. I can't think of a worse screenplay than this one, and that
includes all the low-budget straight-to-video numbers that get aired in
the middle of the night on HBO. It is humorless (although there are
many failed attempts at humor). It is not thought-out, and most of the
dialogue sounds like it was written by middle-schoolers still trying to
get a firm hold on the language. Example: "They might escape out into
the city!" Any competent screenwriter would notice that "escape out" is
redundant, and that "They might escape into the city!" would be the
correct statement. Am I quibbling? No, because the script is
jam-packed with this kind of sloppy writing. It makes me wonder if they
proofread the script before filming it. Better yet, I wonder if they
wrote the script down at any point in time. Keep in mind that *two*
adults are responsible for this writing.

How about this -- some helicopters have Godzilla targeted with
heat-seeking missiles. When he dodges them, and the missiles blow up
the Chrysler building (I'm having flashbacks of Independence Day . . . I
can't believe they ripped off their own film), the reason is that he's
colder than the buildings around them. That must be because he's cold
blooded, because he's a lizard, right? Well, cold blooded doesn't mean
that he's really cold, for even the smallest snake in the world would
have a higher body temperature than a concrete building in the rain.
This film, in every aspect, is the result of carelessness and idiocy.

And here's the final blow: the special effects just aren't that
great. The sequence I mentioned above is exciting and fairly
well-crafted, but everything else here is terrible. Godzilla frequently
looks like a cartoon, such as in the underwater scene that is a direct
rip-off from Alien Resurrection. There's a lengthy sequence in which
our heroes find the egg room, and this is lifted straight out of
Aliens. Everything else in the film is a poor remake of Jurassic Park;
Godzilla itself looks just like the Tyrannosaurus, and all the baby
lizards hold striking resemblance to the raptors from that film. Every
single sequence (note that -- every single sequence) is unoriginal,
complemented by mediocre-to-lousy special effects and drab direction.
The film is not exciting, and not interesting, and lacks even a hint of
style and energy that even the silliest summer flicks always have.

Godzilla is unacceptable. It is the worst big budget film of all time,
and it wins this title by a landslide. Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin
are con artists, and coning is apparently the only kind of art they have
a handle on. Understand this: I love big-budget summer fare. Recent
films like The Rock, The Fifth Element, and Contact are great
blockbusters that use big budgets to their advantages, and treat their
audience with respect. Godzilla is a sloppy, boring film that delivers
none of what it promises. I hate this film, and I hate that people are
going to flock to see it. Certainly some will enjoy it, and I can't
stop that. But I predict that most people will be disappointed in this
film. I'm hoping that Emmerich and Devlin have spewed their last, for
this piece of crap retires all patience I once had for them.

1/2* out of ****
(1/10, F)

**********/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\************
Visit FILM PSYCHOSIS at
http://www.pyramid.net/natesmovies

Nathaniel R. Atcheson
**********/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\************

[Edward Champion]

MOVIE REVIEW: GODZILLA
RATING: *1/2 (out of four stars)
Review by Edward Champion

PREFATORY WARNING FOR CHEESEPHILES: GODZILLA is a movie
that does NOT contain cheese, nor is it an homage or tribute to the
original Japanese GODZILLA movies. If the sole reason you are going
to see GODZILLA is the cheese, you will find nothing there except bad
jokes, a sleekly designed monster that resembles a reject CG
Tyrannosaurus Rex model from I LM, and essentially a fourth-rate
ripoff of Spielberg's JURASSIC PARK movies.

* * *

I must admit that I am a Godzilla fan. When I was growing up, I was
in front of the television every week like clockwork. My little legs
would race off to watch the Saturday afternoon matinee and the local
station would play all of the Japanese imports from Toho, Inc.

Gamera. Mothra. Ghidrah. Gigan. Megalon. But most of all,
Godzilla.

All of them were my childhood pals. Giant monsters created by guys in
monster suits constantly menacing Tokyo. I always wondered how they
managed to rebuild Tokyo so fast in between movies, but what did I
care?

Even back then, I knew that the special effects were tacky and that
there was no way any of these monsters could possibly develop from
radiation.

But that was part of the fun. You had to admire the way the Toho
films tried to tell a story with limited resources, even though it
could never happen. There was a certain magic to it all, and the bad
dubbing gave the films a little extra character. Maybe it was an
early sympathy I had for low-budget filmmakers, I don't know.

So when I heard that Roland Emmerich was finally going to helm the
big-budget GODZILLA project that had been in turnaround for years, I
was at first a bit skeptical. This was the man who had conned us into
seeing such tripe as STARGATE and INDEPENDENCE DAY, who shamelessly
recycled successful science fiction movies and turned them into
money-makers with a certain degree of cheese on the side.

But then I actually considered for the moment that Emmerich might be
the right guy for the job and that the studio execs were playing
Emmerich for a fool. Emmerich had, after all, stooped to the lowest
common denominator with INDEPENDENCE DAY and some of the
self-conscious cheese within it had managed to work.

It made perfect sense. Give the film to a shamelessly awful filmmaker
and he would recapture the glory of Toho.

Of course, I neglected to remember the previous attempt to squeeze
revenue from Godzilla on Yankee shores, the Japanese-American
co-production, GODZILLA 1985. I remember seeing that film when I was
eleven and, even at that early age, I felt conned. Still, I had the
old Toho films to make up for it.

But when the ingenious marketing campaign began for GODZILLA ("His
foot is as long as this bus"), common sense was thrown out the window.
I needed my fix of GODZILLA, dammit, $100 million production or no.
So I planned out the cinematic pilgrimage with equally zealous
compadres for opening night.

I couldn't have been more disappointed.

GODZILLA is a film that is EVEN DUMBER than INDPENDENCE DAY. So inept
is the writing, so devoid is the script of any kind of fun, and so
misguided is the direction that it makes one wonder if Emmerich will
have a future if GODZILLA does not gross more than $100 million
domestically.

For one thing, Godzilla is only in about thirty minutes of this
interminable two hour and twenty minute piece of crapola. The Toho
films never kept you hanging for so long and, even when they did, you
got such wacky characters as the twin girls or the interesting
bureaucratic figures trying to unite against the monsters.

The characters in this film are more derivative than a really bad
episode of PAULY. Matthew Broderick plays a nuclear biologist who's
into earthworms, noting their increased length amidst radiation.
Suddenly, he's called to investigate Godzilla's escape off of an
island, a French nuclear test site (the French recently started
testing nuclear bombs last year, but then I guess Emmerich and
co-writer Devlin don't read the newspapers).

Meanwhile, Broderick's ex-girlfriend Lucy (Arabella Field) is trying
to pursue a career as a reporter, despite the control and lust of her
boss, TV anchorman Charles Caiman (Harry Shearer). (As an aside,
ain't it funny that we've had two blockbuster movies in a row (DEEP
IMPACT being the other one) with the contrived Career Woman Gets Ahead
subplot. But I digress…)

As you might guess, Godzilla arrives in the now overused city of New
York to wreck havoc and destroy notable landmarks. (This time around,
it's the Chrysler Building and the Brooklyn Bridge.)

One of the main problems with this movie is that Emmerich and Devlin
take this movie too seriously, not going for the cheese like they
should. Godzilla as a whole is rarely seen. We see his tail crashing
into buildings. His feet smash onto cars. But very rarely is his
entire frame seen. Part of the joy of the Toho films was seeing a
full profile of Godzilla smashing into obviously artificial models of
cities and landmarks. Very rarely did you see anyone get hurt.

But Emmerich goes for the graphic approach here. Godzilla is not the
sympathetic figure that he was in before and he shows no mercy in
annihilating people. He's also more crafty, able to maliciously cause
harm by dodging heat-seeking missiles and deliberately allowing them
to kill. In the Toho films, Godzilla was sort of a clumsy monster,
but ultimately he didn't mean any harm unless you really pissed him
off. He had the sympathy of the people, often stopping to fight
monsters that posed an even greater threat to Earth.

But even more horrifying is the slipshod design Emmerich has created.
When Godzilla is fully revealed (after forty-five minutes of mindless
prattling amongst one-dimensional characters), he is a sleek CG model
with a cruel face that resembles more of a Tyrannosaurus Rex than a
goofy lizard.

That sure as hell isn't the Godzilla I remember.

In fact, the few moments that are fun in this movie don't even involve
Godzilla at all. Midway through the film, Godzilla creates a nest of
eggs in Madison Square Garden. Inevitably, they hatch and, while
seeing the baby lizards run around is interesting to a point, the
sequence heavily plagiarizes the raptor pursuit in the final moments
of JURASSIC PARK. As a further Spielberg ripoff, Emmerich constantly
has the swinging flashlight routine going on.

The real question you have to ask yourself before you see this movie
is whether you want to spend eight bucks on a movie that is clearly
not inspired from its source or to rent exemplars of the source
itself. It's just that bad.

One wonders what Jan De Bont could have done with this material had he
been allowed to stay on. Any other director would have embraced the
B-movie legend rather than reinvent it with all the ingenuity of a
thieving cocker spaniel. But then this is Hollywood. Spare no
expense, to quote Emmerich's latest source of plagiarism.

But I guess Hollywood doesn't seem to understand these sort of things.
Sometimes, they've got a good thing going without any money at all.

[Jason Sands]

The Big G gets a 90s make over in this thrilling roller coaster of FX.
In this version, Godzilla is the result of French nulcear testing in the
50s. He is supposedly a mutated Iguana, and is well over two hundred
feet tall.

The main plot revolves around Nick (Matthew Broderick), a
Biologist/Nuclear Physicist who is researching the results of Radiation
on animals. He is called in to investigate when Godzilla attakcs a
Japanese Fishing boat.

Meanwhile, Nick's ex girlfriend is struggling in a dismal job as toadie
to a smarmy anchorman. It seems she dumped him when he asked her to
marry her in the films lame attempt at a love story. But hey, who cares
about the little people? THis move ain't called Broderick; We are here
to see the Big Guy turn up the heat!

There are many struggles by the script writers to keep Godzilla
"realistic." He is not the invincible juggernaut of Japanese Kaiju
films; He can be hurt, and used speed, agility, and cunning to defeat
the army instead of brute strength.

Godzilla's special FX are nothing short of amazing; His sheer size is
well displayed by some artful direction, and his much more reptillian
appearance makes him all the more menacing. Instead of an atomic fire
blast, he can create hurricane force winds with his roar.

BTW, he is a HE. Yes, the egg laying thing is a big part of the plot,
but he produces the eggs asexually.

Godzilla dwells little on the human side of the drama, which is good
since it basically sucks. The producers probably knew this, so there
are many, many jabs a Film Critics Siskel and Ebert. Doesn't excuse the
thin plot, though.

Kudos do go to the Professional, (forgot his name.) who plays a French
Secret Agent. He is the only well developed character in the movie,
and his screen time is among the shortest.

All in all, I have to say that Godzilla is a great, entertaining movie,
but not for the human actors; For all of the city stomping anctics of
the Big G. The movie screams for sequal; How about a rematch with King
Kong? Hey, it could happen...

******** of Ten .

The Steel City Wrestling Federation: Where the big boys play with
attitude!

http://www.angelfire.com/mi/scwrestling

[Phil Brady]

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.

[Craig Roush]

GODZILLA

Release Date: May 20, 1998
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria,
Michael Lerner, Arabella Field, Kevin Dunn, Harry Shearer
Directed by: Roland Emmerich
Distributed by: TriStar Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (sci-fi monster action/violence)
URL: http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio/reviews/1998/godzilla.htm

Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, creators, writers, and producers of
1998's long-awaited monster thriller GODZILLA, once caught lightning in
the bottle with 1996's INDEPENDENCE DAY. So overhyped that it became the
must-see movie of the year, and eventually impossibly successful with
the summer movie crowds, and so corny and melodramatic that it was
actually fun to watch, ID4 was the pinnacle of senseless cinema. In
keeping with the lightning analogy, though, it rarely strikes the same
place twice, and Emmerich and Devlin have turned out a product here that
pales in comparison to their earlier alien-invasion film.

The Memorial Day weekend has long been home to loud and high-powered
movies (e.g. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, THE LOST WORLD). After all, it
practically opens the summer movie season. In fact, the much-overhyped
movie that opens on Memorial Day is typically the only movie to have a
chance to outdo the much-overhyped movie that opens on the July 4
weekend. However, if there was any doubt prior to GODZILLA's opening,
this Memorial Day movie will likely fade quickly once the asteroid
thriller ARMAGEDDON takes to the screens. After the limpness of DEEP
IMPACT and the downright staleness of GODZILLA, audiences will be
looking for something sharp and intense when they attend the theaters.

The reason GODZILLA is so stale is because the picture is incredibly
formulaic. It follows the typical maxim that "my enemy is only my enemy
until I know his secret." Although that was present in INDEPENDENCE DAY,
it wasn't completely obvious until the final thirty minutes. Here,
Emmerich brings Godzilla (a gecko-ish creature created from a French
nuclear explosion) to New York City with little premise but much
fanfare; turns the disaster and distruction knob to 11; and sits back as
a paltry crew of humans works frantically to hit the beast with
everything they have. The special effects, very JURASSIC PARK-ish in
nature, depict an agile Godzilla that's novel but hardly worth much. For
almost the whole of its 135-minute running time, this movie is nothing
but a messy mix of special effects and bad acting.

The only way to enjoy GODZILLA is to dumb yourself down prior to
watching the flick. Matthew Broderick and Maria Pitillo, our two leads,
almost seem to be laughing silently at their parts. Most of the cast,
save the watchable Jean Reno, follows in accordance, and this results in
the movie being split into two entirely different sections. The movie
gravitates towards parody ground when the beast isn't on screen, and
then makes a radical shift towards guns-blazing action territory
whenever the call comes in that Godzilla looms nearby. It's much harder
to get as attached or involved here as most were in INDEPENDENCE, but
with the imminent box office returns and the wide-open ending (again,
formulaic), it won't be long before we see GODZILLA 2.

FINAL AWARD FOR "GODZILLA": 2.0 stars - a fair movie.

--
Craig Roush
kinn...@execpc.com
--
Kinnopio's Movie Reviews
http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio

[Ram Samudrala]

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Godzilla
A film review by Ram Samudrala
----------------------------------------------------------------------

"History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of
man." So goes one of the lines in Blue Oyster Cult's radio hit
/Godzilla/ (a song that I think would've worked out great in this
film). /Godzilla/ the movie illustrates this truism with great visual
effects.

When a species of lizard is buffeted with radiation from nuclear
blasts, it finds a way to survive (shades of /Jurassic Park/) by
evolving into a new species, one that could replace man as the most
dominant one in the planet. The sole asexual representative of this
species decides to lay its eggs in Madison Square Garden (ah, New
York, New York). It's up to worm expert Nick Tatapoulous (Matthew
Broderick), French patriot Philippe Roache (Jean Reno), and TV
reporters Victor "Animal" Palotti (Hank Azaria) and Audrey Timmons
(Maria Pittilla), to save the day before Godzilla and its progeny
succeed in overthrowing man.

The movie starts out nicely; showing only glimpses of the power of the
monster. When we finally get to see its full height and breadth, it
is shown to be cunning and intelligent. Unfortunately it is put out
of action while the characters get their time in the lime light. When
Godzilla comes back, it is a changed animal angered at seeing its
entire brood destroyed.

Not too surprisingly, the effects are also reminiscent of /Jurassic
Park/. Even though most of the action takes place in the middle of
Manhattan, some of the chase scenes are very similar to a T-Rex
breathing down on a racing vehicle or Velociraptors cavorting in a
kitchen. But the one thing going for /Godzilla/ is the size of the
aberration, and as the catch phrase for this movie goes: size does
matter.

The effects are great and represent the sole reason to see this
movie. While they are not any significant advancement, they are more
in-your-face and more convincing; in other words, bigger and better.
Some of the movie (particularly scenes involving people) is done in a
B-movie style, perhaps paying homage to the original Japanese Godzilla
series. There is some decent humour, particularly from the characters
played by Azaria and Reno. The self-effacing quality to the movie
which rounds it off nicely falters only in the very end when the
monster is beaten and the audience expected to rejoice at the military
might of the fighter plane squadron (shades of /Star Wars/) vs. a
single lizard, while feeling sympathy for it at the same time.

Godzilla, who first showed up in 1954, was a metaphor for the American
threat to the Japanese, particularly the US government testing nuclear
weapons in the pacific (in the beginning of this movie it is Godzilla,
not nuclear fallout that destroys a Japanese boat). It's ironic that
the 1998 incarnation of Godzilla lays waste to New York City, perhaps
a metaphor for the Japanese threat to US economic interests (although
the part where the responsibility for its creation is placed upon the
French is a bit incongruous).

A shameless opening is left for a sequel, a la /Species/. I can't wait
to see what they come up with. In the meantime, I'm sure audiences
won't be walking out of this film with their thumbs down. /Godzilla/
is definitely worth plonking down seven dollars.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
email@urls || http://www.ram.org || http://www.twisted-helices.com/th
Movie ram-blings: http://www.ram.org/ramblings/movies.html

[Doug Skiles]

GODZILLA (1998)

Starring: Matthew Broderick (Dr. Niko "Nick" Tatopoulos), Maria Pitillo
(Audrey Timmonds), Jean Reno (Philippe Roache), Hank Azaria (Victor
"Animal" Palotti), Harry Shearer (Charles Caiman), Kevin Dunn (Colonel
Hicks), Arabella Field (Lucy Palotti), Doug Savant (Sergeant O'Neal),
Vicki Lewis (Dr. Elsie Chapman), Michael Lerner (Mayor Ebert), Lorry
Goldman (Gene), and Godzilla as himself

Directed by: Roland Emmerich, Written by: Dean Devlin & Roland Emmerich

Rated PG-13 for violence, mild profanity, and mild sexual innuendo

Reviewed by Doug Skiles

He is bigger... than a breadbox.

Plus he's mad, he's bad, and he's either green or grey/black depending
on your point of view. He's Godzilla, and he's been a long time in
coming to Hollywood. Back in the summer of 1992 I got a small poster
advertising the coming of this Tri-Star film, to be released in the
summer of 1993. He didn't come. JURASSIC PARK (1993) dinosaurs came,
but no Godzilla. Well, now it's the summer of 1998. Five years is
pretty damn off target.

Still, now that he's arrived, he certainly did it in style. $120
million dollars were spent on the big guy. Not bad for someone who's
essentially a reptile with a nasty growth spurt.

Godzilla's story, in this new film, is that he was a simple lizard who
got nuked. Yes, while merely a young egg at a nuclear testing site, a
bomb was dropped in the area and the resulting radiation has caused our
little green friend... well, he looks green to me... to grow to enormous
proportions.

This incident isn't without precedent - turns out that Dr. Niko
Tatopoulos - you can call him Nick - has been studying the effects of
radiation on the earthworms in Chernobyl in the Ukraine. It turns out
that they've grown 17% in size since the incident there on April 26,
1986. With his experience in the effects of radiation on biological
specimens, the U.S. military is soon calling on the good doctor to help
investigate a new creature who's managed to take out a sub and go
traveling across Panama. The only survivor of the sub attack is a
Japanese man who seems only able to say one word - "Gojira."

Turns out that this "Gojira" is heading to New York. He gets there,
causes trouble, and pretty soon a local reporter has gotten ahold of a
video of the previous sightings of this beast, leading to the network's
anchor, Charles Caiman, misinterpreting the Japanese man on the tape and
calling this gargantuan beast "Godzilla."

GODZILLA is yet another example of a movie that's dumb... but fun.
Often very fun. Of course, it's from Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich,
the creators of INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996), which was a prime example of
"dumb fun," although it glorified we Americans a bit too much. I
imagine it didn't play too well outside of this country. Well, I'd say
that GODZILA is a better film, if only because I prefer the green guy to
anonymous aliens.

Fans of the classic Godzilla will be pleased to note a few things.
Godzilla's roar still sounds pretty much the same, a scientist is still
the hero, and Godzilla is once again bugged momentarily by electricity
in one scene, as he was in KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (1962), even though
electricity didn't bug the big G at all back in the original GODZILLA,
KING OF THE MONSTERS (1954). There's a few other touches from the past,
too, that I won't reveal here.

The characters are paper-thin, but at least everyone does their job
well. There's really not a person in the bunch that doesn't perform
satisfactorily - it's just a shame that their parts weren't written
better. Of course, compare these characters to those in all of the old
Godzilla films, and they're look like they've got a full psychological
profile by contrast. Hank Azaria is a particular standout, and Jean
Reno is the epitome of cool, as he always is. Matthew Broderick is
surprisingly strong as well. Maria Pitillo plays her role quite nicely,
but the fact is, she has the most underwritten role of the group. She
seems to be there primarily to take up screen time and act as a love
interest for Broderick. Still, I doubt anyone else could've played the
role much better, and I'm sure she's happy to be in such a major release
film.

Oh, I should mention the Siskel and Ebert mayor and sidekick. Yes, the
mayor is named Ebert, and his assistant is named Gene. They also use
"thumbs up" and "thumbs down" symbols for campaigning, yelling at each
other, etc, throughout the movie. I'm not sure if it was a homage or an
insult, but either way, it's just a weird little joke that doesn't
detract from the movie at all - it's just there.

The direction by Emmerich is nicely handled, and the score by David
Arnold, who also worked on INDEPENDENCE DAY as well as the recent
eighteenth James Bond film, TOMORROW NEVER DIES (1997), is his usual
expert work.

But, of course, the real star of the show is Godzilla himself. And boy,
does he look fantastic. The new design of the beast isn't the way you
remember Godzilla, but it still FEELS like Godzilla, and that's what
counts. Plus it's huge, threatening, and quite cool. The effects on
the monster? Flawless. All of the movie's effects are perfect, with
nice little touches throughout, such as the damage Godzilla does by
scraping his tail along the side of a building. It's the little things
like that that really take your breath away. After all, we've seen
large scaly beasts before. Of course, not THIS large...

And when the action sequences get going, they're the best part of the
movie. Thrilling, and sometimes adding genuine tension to the mix,
especially in the last 40 minutes of film, these alone are worth the
price of admission. Some people have complained that they resemble
elements of JURASSIC PARK too heavily. Well, I promise you, only ONE
scene resembles anything from JURASSIC PARK, and that is a face-off in
the latter half of the movie that's somewhat similar to the "raptors in
the kitchen" scene from the first Spielberg dinosaur film. However, I'm
happy to report that it more than holds its own with that great
sequence, and in fact, in a number of ways it surpasses it. Absolutely
nothing else in GODZILLA resembles anything from JURASSIC PARK or its
sequel in any way, shape, or form.

It's interesting to note that most of the movie's action takes place at
night, and pretty much all of the entire show occurs in the rain. It's
a very nice atmospheric touch, almost making this a monster noir film.
Interesting.

GODZILLA is another typical American summer film. It's dumb, but it's a
lot of fun. Will something better come along this summer? I guess
we'll have to wait and see. Some people will find that GODZILLA doesn't
live up to the hype, but then again, what COULD live up to this much
advance promotion? It's still a good time. Dumb writing and thin
characters hurt it, but this movie isn't supposed to be art, it's only
supposed to be fun. And on that level, it delivers just fine.

Rating: ***

"Wrong floor." - Dr. "Nick" Tatopoulos

[Seth Bookey]

Godzilla (1998)

Seen on 21 May 1998 with Andrea for $18 at the Sony Lincoln Square and on
22 May with Tony for $8.75 at the Cineplex Odeon Chelsea.

There is a good news and bad news about *Godzilla*. The good news is that
*Godzilla* does not destroy anything above 60th Street, so my
rent-stabilized apartment was never in danger. The bad news is that the
only good thing about Godzilla is the lizard itself; the acting, story,
and script is flawed. So why did I see it twice? Well, that's a
Seinfelding saga not worth repeating.

Actually, seeing it twice made me notice some subtle humorous touches I
didn't notice the first time, but was it worth spending in excess of $25
for it? Well, no, but I have done enough sneak-ins and seen enough
Godzilla (and Mothra!) free on cable to see the karmic justice in this.

Directed by Roland Emmerich (of *Independence Day* fame) and from the
makers of Tylenol, *Godzilla* has been promoted since I saw the preview at
*Men In Black*, and the audience went wild. A lot of secrecy surrounded
the new look of the monster, and with good reason. It's not as "human" as
the original Toho version, and it's face is amorphous. As Andrea put it,
"They do the feet the best."

An interview with the director reveals that until *ID4*, a lot of filming
was done in New York, and the monster was added later with computer
graphics. So the result is some fairly realistic scenes of authentic
destruction of New York. In fact, the monster destroys the area a block
away from my office, which was spared. Damn. Also, seeing Godzilla
diving over the West Side Highway and into the Hudson River was pretty
neat.

There are also some neat homages to other movies here. The opening scene
of the sinking of the Japanese fishing boat is right out of the Japanese
monster movies that inspired this movie. The Mayor's first scene is
reminiscent of the umbrella scene in Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent and
the finale at Madison Square Garden reminds me of the final scene of the
Birds..

That's about it for praise. As Dave points out, a big flaw in these
special effects blockbusters is that there is too much talk. Also, the
acting budget is scuttled, so we get a shrill, vapid Maria Patillo (as
Audrey) instead of a Helen Hunt or a Minnie Driver. It's like two
different movies there for a while. Effects-laden monster suspense one
minute, B-grade comedy straight-to-video the next. Matthew Broderick as the
atomic scientist hero is not an asset either. However, he does fulfill the
traditional role of the little boy Godzilla loves.

Everyone seems rather two dimensional and bumbling. There's the stuttering
military man O'Neill (Doug Savant), the New Yawk cameraman "Animal" (Hank
Azaria) who embodies every stereotype (including an annoying wife who
lovingly calls him a "dumb wop."), Harry Shearer as the sexist pig
newscaster, Michael Lerner plays Mayor Ebert--complete with Gene, the
campaign manager he abuses (that seemed bizarre--I guess the director
hates Siskel *and* Ebert).. The only character that is truly humorous and
not annoying is Jean Reno as the French secret service man who feels his
country's responsibility in creating Godzilla inadvertently by doing
nuclear tests in Polynesia. It's a shame that the joke of his assistant
spies being named Jean-Claude, Jean-Paul, and Jean-Philippe is hidden
until the final credits. Oh, and who keeps a top-secret videotape in a
tent TOP SECRET written with big red letters on it?

There are some inconsistencies as well. It's pouring rain half the time,
but that effect is turned on and off like a faucet. It's supposed to be
raining, yet there's a pushcart vendor flipping burgers on the grill? The
It's pouring rain when people first see Godzilla but when there's a chase
scene minutes later, the rain stops. It starts again when the chase is
over. A movie that costs this much should be able to afford some
continuity. The city is really ravaged, but there is electricity flowing
freely. No gas main explosions or watermain leaks either, which we have in
New York *without* a visit from Godzilla. It's PG-13, and while some
people are killed off camera, there are no injuries and no hospital or
medical scenes. Godzilla puts a hole in the Pan Am Building in the middle
of a workday, and there is no mention of casualties? It's PG-13 all the
way.

The love story and the "news story" angles are silly and two-dimensional.
The original Toho productions usually kept the human stories fairly
message oriented about the environment. The film's opening sequence does
this; it's too bad that the rest of the film didn't do that.

The original music by David Arnold is good in the opening sequence, but
not as good throughout, and the hokey Japanese trumpets of the Japanese
version is sorely missed.

Add a star if you loved *Godzilla* movies as a kid, or if you are a kid.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (c) 1998, Seth J. Bookey, New York, NY 10021
seth...@panix.com; http://www.panix.com/~sethbook

More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html

[Matt Williams]

GODZILLA
A film review by Matt Williams

RATING: * 1/2* out of * * * *

Call him Godzilla, The Reluctant Lizard. The makers of Independence Day
have applied their unique sensibilities to reinventing everyone's
favorite big, green, city-stomping reptile. You don't really expect
much in the way of plot and/or character development, do you? Good. But
in this new incarnation, the scaly fella may be bigger, but he's not
very impressive.

Born many years earlier, during French nuclear testing in the South
Pacific, Godzilla has chosen this moment to make his public appearance
(And why not? This is the Summer Movie Season!) From his South Pacific
home, he makes a beeline toward The Big Apple...presumably because of
the smell of fish.

Naturally, the military is concerned. They bring in an expert in
radiation-induced growth-mutations, Dr. Niko Tatopoulos (Matthew
Broderick). He is the stock personality-free scientist who has
frequented other Emmerich productions such as Stargate (James Spader),
and Independence Day (Jeff Goldblum).

But Dr. Tatopoulos isn't the only character strewn into the path of a
giant lizard. No, we are tormented with the presence of his
ex-girlfriend, and television reporter hopeful, Audrey Timmonds (Maria
Pitillo)...a completely annoying and unsympathetic character. At least
she's accompanied by cameraman Victor "Animal" Palotti (Hank Azaria),
who gives the film its best Godzilla-induced fear reaction.

On a more entertaining note, the French Secret Service have dispatched
crack agent Philippe Roache (Jean Reno) to quietly dispose of the
monster. Reno's cool mannerisms and suave style easily make him the most
enjoyable character in the film, even if the French jokes are layed on a
bit thick.

And then there's the big guy...Godzilla himself. In the original
Japanese monster flicks, Godzilla always had sort of a surly attitude
(probably the result of an unhappy actor spending too much time in an
uncomfortable rubber suit). The new Godzilla, on the other hand, has no
attitude whatsoever. He's a personality free lizard, and though you may
not spot any zippers in his new incarnation, he's hardly the same ol'
creature.

The special effects have obviously improved over the years, and you
might think that Godzilla would benefit from the enhanced technology.
The answer is yes and no. In redesigning the creature, the filmmakers
apparently decided to stay with the "guy in a lizard suit" theme.
Although the new creature has been given a good, realistic head, he is
also in possession of very human arms and legs. So, even though he's
entirely computer generated, you can never quite shake the image of a
guy in a suit creeping around a model city.

Every special effects driven movie needs to have some sort of
centerpiece scene, a scene which is so impressive that you instantly
forget about secondary problems such as plot or characterization. Such
a scene is missing from Godzilla. There's only one action sequence,
stuck at the end of the film, which comes close (it's derivative and
unbelievable, but fun).

You can never expect much from the script for a special effects
extravaganza (after all, if the film is done right, no one will ever
notice little details like a screenplay), but the script for Godzilla
scrapes the bottom of the barrel. Not much makes sense here (for
example, why is anyone surprised when the radioactive-mutation expert
suggests Godzilla is the result of radioactive-mutation?) and a lot of
little details haven't been thought out (why don't the attack
helicopters fly above the lizard, rather than at mouth range?) And the
characters? Independence Day had a stronger batch, and that's not
saying much. Even the so-called humor in the film (the labored
Siskel-and-Ebert jokes simply seem bitter) fall flat. No, there's not
much here.

If you're looking for a popcorn film, Godzilla may seem to fill the
bill. And at the dollar theater, you might be right. But even as
low-grade mindless entertainment, Godzilla isn't quite satisfying.
You'd get much better entertainment value for your buck by rewatching
some of Godzilla's inspirations: Jurassic Park, or even the original
Gojira. This Godzilla may be big, but he's an empty shell.

Copyright 1998 Matt Williams

- Matt Williams (ma...@cinematter.com)
Reviewer for Cinematter: http://www.cinematter.com
Home of over 500 reviews, and information on over 600 upcoming releases

[David Sunga]

GODZILLA (1998)

Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 4.0)
********************************
Key to rating system:
2.0 stars - Debatable
2.5 stars - Some people may like it
3.0 stars - I liked it
3.5 stars - I am biased in favor of the movie
4.0 stars - I felt the movie's impact personally or it stood out
*********************************
A Movie Review by David Sunga

Directed by: Roland Emmerich

Written by: Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich

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

Ingredients:
Try to imagine JURASSIC PARK, except replace the gawky Jeff Goldblum
character with nebbish biologist Matthew Broderick, and then make sure
there are no kids as main characters. Let dinosaurs run wild in New York
City; add mutated giant iguana, the Chrysler Building, Madison Square
Garden, a running gag about Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. Stir in
spectacular effects.

Synopsis:
GODZILLA (1998) is actually the 23rd Godzilla movie - - an updated,
1990s version of the 1954 Japanese classic monster movie GOJIRA
(pronounced Goji-lah).

Let's do a quick recap of the title lizard's history before discussing
the 1998 GODZILLA further. GOJIRA is the name of the monster, derived
from the word kujira, the Japanese word for whale. In real life the
Japanese people of 1954 had lived through fire bombings and survived an
atomic attack which leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the war, so
GOJIRA was, understandably, a reflection of their post WW II anxieties.
Gojira (in one interpretation), was a dormant dinosaur, who, due to
irresponsible H-bomb testing, mutated to become the personification of
nature's inevitable revenge for man's brash and offensive tampering - -
a huge radioactive fire-breathing, civilization-smashing monster.

Two years later, the 1956 dubbed English-language version of GOJIRA was
released as GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS. It added new footage of
Raymond Burr as narrating reporter Steve Martin to make the film more
palatable to American audiences. GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS had
three major plot lines: the military versus the monster; reporter Steve
covering the biggest story of his career, and; a love triangle involving
the brilliant hero scientist Serizawa who is rejected by the beautiful
woman Emiko.

And now we have GODZILLA (1998), directed and produced by Emmerich and
Devlin, of INDEPENDENCE DAY. The story still involves a hero scientist,
rejection, his lady love, a reporter, and the military fighting the
animal. But while the old story has the male scientist's love dilemma
and the male reporter's career-making news story as two separate
subplots, the 1998 version condenses the two plots into a single,
tenuous romance involving a shy male scientist hero and an ambitious
broadcast news gal.

Matthew Broderick plays brilliant biologist Nick Tatopoulis who was
rejected 8 years ago by the beautiful Audrey (Maria Pitillo). But now
Nick is investigating the possible existence of a huge monster created
by radioactive mutation, and Audrey is covering the biggest story of her
career: GODZILLA. Will they meet and resolve their differences?

In this 1998 version, the title lizard is not a dinosaur, but an iguana
mutated to gigantic proportions from French nuclear testing (which they
really did in Mururoa in 1995). Next the big iguana begins plundering
fish from fishing boats: he attacks a Japanese cannery vessel right.
Later Godzilla ransacks another net full of fish, dragging a poor tuna
boat down along with its cache. Why is the monster so eager for
mouthfuls of fish? It's up to Nick to figure out the mystery. Jean Reno
plays a mysterious Frenchman who helps Nick out. Meanwhile, the big
lizard takes a liking to New York, and goes stomping around on a path of
destruction that only two F-18 hornets (military planes) dare to
challenge.

Opinion:
It was probably inevitable that pop culture monster Godzilla would
finally be up for a Hollywood retread. In over 40 years the Toho Co.,
Ltd monster was the star of 22 movies (in which he amassed a 24-5-7
fight record versus other monsters), toys, a cartoon, a comic book, and
several commercials.

The good news is that as a film GODZILLA is a big budget special effects
extravaganza, and can be quite crowd-pleasing, especially if you're into
dinosaurs, and you like to see stuff get smashed. With the right crowd
GODZILLA is an eye candy event, like going back in time to a 1950s
monster matinee, with folks screaming and cheering for the monster.
People who have never before seen a Godzilla movie can enjoy plenty of
fast, leaping lizards and snapping teeth.

As a script, GODZILLA is mediocre - - predictable, with uninspired
characters, a length perhaps 20 minutes over the mark, and a split in
attention whenever the big lizard leaves the screen and we're forced to
follow another plot about a subway search. GODZILLA also makes obvious
changes in the appearance and personality of the familiar monster, and
this could risk alienating nostalgic audiences even as the monster gains
a younger following through its judicious ad campaign and commercial
tie-ins.

After forty-plus years, the main difference between the classic film and
its new update is in Godzilla's personality. In 1954 Gojira is nature's
avenger; he has no fear of planes and eagerly roasts them with blasts of
fire or smashes them with his front claws; in fact he seems to relish
laying waste to Tokyo. In 1998, Godzilla spends most of his time
running away from helicopters and planes, doesn't use his front claws,
and seems unaware that he can emit fiery blasts (total blast count = 2).
He's just an oversized beast in the way of man's progress. The monster
does show some promising flashes of intelligence during a submarine
battle, and some last minute fighting spirit at the end of the film, but
not much compared the old Godzilla personality.

Probably the reason for these differences is because Dean Devlin and
Roland Emmerich are saving some room for Godzilla's future character
development. Get ready for sequels.

(I imagine something like this: Down and out, discredited biologist Nick
Tatopoulis gets the blame for last movie's damage to New York until the
CIA discovers evidence of another Godzilla, and comes back begging for
advice. Nick refuses involvement until he finds out his comerade the
Frenchman has disappeared and is in need of rescue. Evading a military
trap in New York, the monster swims up the Great Lakes and pops up in
Chicago where he wreaks havoc with the Bulls, Oprah, Jerry Springer, the
whales in the Shedd Aquarium, the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier, and the big
T-rex skeleton named Sue at the Field Museum. The monster uses burrowing
to make a nifty escape from the military, and then because of a
complication emerges mutated, bigger, and badder than ever, and climbs
the Sears Tower for a nasty climactic battle. One cameo involves a
cardboard box and the Taco Bell chihuahua, while another involves Kevin
Bacon and the cast of TREMORS. Don't mess with mother nature!)

Reviewed by David Sunga
May 22, 1998
Copyright © 1998 by David Sunga
This review and others like it can be found at
THE CRITIC ZOO: http://www.criticzoo.com
email: zook...@criticzoo.com

[David Thiel]

One of the things that bothered me about early fanboy criticism of the
American GODZILLA film was how everyone was worried that the new beast
wouldn't be strictly canonical. I couldn't understand this, considering what
*is* canonical within the official Toho monster series. In various movies
Godzilla has flown, talked, magnetized his body and slid on his tail like a
baseball runner. And the Big G's appearance had changed quite a bit from film
to film. So, I thought, he's redesigned--so what?

For me, part of the problem with this Godzilla film was that the producers
weren't really interested in making a Godzilla film. They were worried about
the potential for camp and cheese, and had to be cajoled into the project.
And it shows.

Aside from the familiar roar, there's very little about this new creature
that suggests Godzilla any more than it does any number of other cinematic
dinosaurs--Gorgo, Gappa, Yongary or the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. He's
basically an oversized JURASSIC PARK T-Rex with spines. Not only has his
appearance radically changed, but so has his personality and behavior. It's
like making a Superman film in which the Man of Steel has a new costume,
teleports instead of flying, comes from the Earth's core rather than the
planet Krypton and has a girlfriend named Trixie. My wife (who is not
a Godzilla fan) felt that this new version lacked the charm of
the Japanese character, and said "he's just a big lizard."

In a way, this Godzilla is a bit pathetic. He's only come to town to lay his
eggs, and couldn't care less about those pesky humans. In return, he's hunted
hither and yon, his children are slaughtered, and he's gutted by a handful of
missiles. Unlike his Japanese cousin, he doesn't even get to escape to the sea
and return another day. Poor guy.

Obviously, one doesn't come to this sort of movie expecting much in the way
of plot or characterization, but these seem thin even by summer "popcorn"
movie standards. INDEPENDENCE DAY (the other sci-fi blockbuster by this
production team of Devlin and Emmerich) had a similar running time, but didn't
seem to drag the way this one does between attacks. That film's characters
weren't quite three-dimensional, but they were generally fun to watch.

Instead, GODZILLA offers the perpetually young Matthew Broderick as a
scientist who isn't quirky enough to be engaging, or charming enough to be a
romantic figure. Furthermore, he's saddled with a reporter wanna-be girlfriend
(Maria Pitillo) who seems to be busing in from a completely different
film--perhaps a romantic comedy in which she'd be the one who loses her
fiancee to Julia Roberts. And then there's the wacky French Secret Service
agent...huh? This is a Godzilla film?

Aside from the scenes of mass destruction, the story centers around
Broderick's relationship with his ex-girlfriend, who is concerned that she
doesn't have what it takes to be a big-shot TV reporter. Who cares?
INDEPENDENCE DAY had its share of romantic sub-plots, but didn't get bogged
down in whether Will Smith would become a space shuttle pilot. Bring on the
lizard!

There's a twist thrown in about Godzilla being pregnant, and the Powers That
Be (including a mayor who is an unflattering caricature of film critic Roger
Ebert) being too pigheaded to heed Broderick's warning to look for the nest. A
lot of JURASSIC PARK-style "raptor hunt" action ensues, which is exciting
enough, but again seems to belong to a different film.

Of course, it's not all bad. If you ignore the fact that this is supposed to
be Godzilla, and treat it as a generic monster-on-the-loose movie, it's
pretty spectacular. Whereas Japanese special effects technology hasn't
improved much since the 60's (check out the new VHS releases of the 90's
versions of GODZILLA VS. KING GHIDORAH and GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA to see what I
mean), this GODZILLA takes full advantage of advances in CGI to create a
convincing portrayal of mass destruction, including some dizzying chase
scenes through the streets of Manhattan.

It's generally entertaining enough, and I felt that I got six bucks' worth of
movie. But I never got chills up my spine, and I was never really concerned
for the safety of the main characters. As for Godzilla himself, I wanted to
say, "I've met Godzilla, and believe me, you're no Godzilla."

David Thiel / Champaign, Illinois
E-mail: d-t...@uiuc.edu
WWW: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/3227

[Brian Wolters]

Just got back from watching Godzilla. I was a big fan of ID4, and even
though it wasn't logical, it was a lot of fun. I went in to Godzilla
expecting the same. What I got was 1 / 2 of what made ID4 good. Special
Effects. And I am not echoing what other people/critics have been saying,
just to be on a bandwagon, but the script was horrible! There was no
Character development. I didn't care about a single soul! The acting by
Maria Pitillo was awful, almost to the point where I needed to quit looking
at the screen and cover up my ears! (I.E. The scene where she was crying.)
All of the other actors were wasted. They were not fun at all! The on going
jokes (Coffee, Tatopoulos last name, etc..) were not staged well at all, so
there was no humor in them. The one-liners were either mumbled, or said so
fast, that I couldn't understand them! And why wasn't Godzilla given more to
do?

As for Godzilla, he was an awesome site, but all of the action scenes
reminded me of Jurassic Park.

Also, why was it raining all of the time? What point in the plot did this
serve?

I left feeling let down and almost bored. I didn't care what happened by
midway through, I just wanted the movie to end! But I give it two stars
because of the special effects and the effort put forth by Broderick!

[Sridhar Prasad]

Godzilla

A film by Roland Emmerich

Starring Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Maria =
Pitillo, and Doug Savant

Written by Dean Deviln and Roland Emmerich. Produced by Dean Devlin

GODZILLA shouldn't be this much fun. After showing what to do right
with a cheesy disaster movie in the incredibly entertaining INDEPENDENCE
DAY of 1996, Emmerich and Devlin do everything wrong in this motion
picture. Without a doubt the most cliched, hackneyed picture made by
Hollywood in recent memory, Godzilla has one of the worst scripts I have
ever seen. The dialogue is garbage, the characters are under-written,
the acting performances are pathetic, and the music is unbelievably bad.
Yet, I guarantee you that Godzilla will be one of the most enjoyable
movies you have ever seen.
Remember that 45 minute lead-in to the aliens in ID4? Forget it.
Devlin and Emmerich are out to get the monster shown in a hurry, and
they do. By the time the credits are over, you see the destructive
power of Godzilla. Within 30 minutes, Devlin and Emmerich show you the
beast. A mix between an iguana, a crocodile, and a T-Rex, he does look
good. The animation is smooth, if horrible at certain times, and the
night sequences are particularly fantastic. Emmerich's talents with
quick cuts and sharp turns make these portions a delight, especially
helicopter chases that go around searching for the monster.
Unfortunately, it's the portions bookending the monster sequences
that are absolutely dreadful. Matthew Broderick does his best as Nick
Tatopoulus, an expert on radiation effects, but he isn't helped much by
this awful script nor by the other actors. Maria Pitillo is atrocious
as Broderick's long-lost love, a perfect ditz who can't get anything
right. Hank Azaria is as wonderful as ever, but he is so underused we
never get a chance to really know him. Only Jean Reno has the most
impact: as a mysterious Frenchman, he is a wild and crazy delight, a
cross between Jeff Goldblum and Brent Spiner's characters in ID4.
After a particularly good 40 mins, the movie settles into a 60
minute holding pattern that is mildly enjoyable at its best, and
downright tedious at its worst. The CGI graphics are outstanding, and
the movements of the monster are fabulous, but sooner or later, you get
tired of seeing the same old scenes over and over again. Savant is OK
as O'Neil, a big and important soldier, but he's not used much either,
and wasted like the rest of the cast. Cliches abound, and the jokes are
painfully stale.
However, it is the last 40 minutes that saves Godzilla. This movie
resembles last year's Memorial Day blockbuster, The Lost World, in that
both are mediocre. However, Devlin and Emmerich saved their best for
last, which is what Spielberg should have done. When Broderick and Reno
go hunting for Godzilla's nest (that's right, he's pregnant--just watch
the commercials!), they find 200 eggs, all of which hatch into little
baby 'Zillas, each of whom are about 5-6 feet tall. Imagine lizard
velociraptors. What happens is some frighteningly fun sequences with
200 monsters and 4 people in a closed up Madison Square Garden. Have we
seen this before? Sure. Jurassic Park did it better before Godzilla,
the remake, was even thought of. But damned if its not fun. The
sequences are gems because they provide some action. Quick cuts and
stale jokes here help, because they are so lighteningly paced that we
actually laugh.
The real fun comes at the end, with an elaborate chase scene.
Again, everything from this movie is derivative. From the music to the
monsters, we've seen all of this before in far better movies. But
that's the point. Devlin and Emmerich set out to make a modern-day,
B-movie monster movie with an enormous budget. That they succeeded
proves that you don't need a script to make a movie fun; you just need a
lot of money. Godzilla shouidn't be this much fun. We should hate it
because it is everything we abhor about the movie industry. But inside
that movie theater, it certainly can be captivating. This is not a good
movie; its just a damn fun bad one.

RATING:
** 1/2 out of ****

[Bill Chambers]

GODZILLA (1998) ZERO STARS (out of four)
-a review by Bill Chambers (wcha...@netcom.ca)
(Ugh. This is becoming so routine... Just visit my damn website, FILM
FREAK CENTRAL.
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/7504
Send me some hate mail, recommend a movie, read the journals...just
have as good a time as you can there.)

starring Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Hank Azaria, Maria Pitillo, Godzilla
screenplay by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich
directed by Roland Emmerich

The team of Emmerich and Devlin scored a giant b.o. hit last time out
with their alien picture, Independence Day. That film was critically
dissed largely because of their use of stereotyping and clichees to
define an ensemble of characters: we knew who the smart guy was
because he wore glasses and a pocket-protector; who the gay guy was
because he ran around squealing like a panzie for his mother; who the
hero was because he promised to "whoop E.T.’s ass". This time out,
Devlin and Emmerich have solved the problem by making no attempts
whatsoever to define their ensemble of characters. Not only is New
York City a shambles when Godzilla is through with it, so is the film,
a disaster-picture in every sense of the word. This may be the most
uncompelling summer movie contender in the history of the sport.

I'm going to give away the plot of this movie with relish, for all the
security surrounding this non-story before the May 20th release was
non-sensical, to say the least. To say the most, it was merely an
attempt to keep the publicity machine well-oiled: on-screen sponsor
Fruit-of-the-Loom is entangled in a breach of contract lawsuit after
revealing early sketches of Godzilla on the Internet. How about suing
Steven Spielberg for revealing the new monster’s design in his
Jurassic Park films? For Godzilla, like the movie itself, is a most
derivative creation.

The movie begins with Broderick driving out into an open field at
Chernobyl to examine some mutated earthworms. Then a helicopter
inexplicably lands before him, and stiffs in suits exit the chopper
and announce to him that his years of earthworm research have ended:
he has been reassigned to investigate giant footprints. Broderick
deduces that the footprints belong to a Polynesian lizard that has
grown to an enormous size because of "years of French Polynesia
nuclear testing". His hypotheses - which also include that the beast
is the first of its kind, and that it is pregnant (he deduces that one
with the aid of an over-the-counter home pregnancy kit) - eventually
prove accurate. For reasons never explained, asexual Godzilla wishes
to lay his eggs in "The City That Never Sleeps" (that's how New
York City is billed!). So he does, in Madison Square Gardens, but only
after crushing a lot of taxi cabs - NO MENTION OF HUMAN CASUALTIES IS
MADE. So Broderick, his stupid ex-girlfriend (Pitillo), a
French-Polynesian top secret agent guy (Reno--the most enjoyable human
presence here), and a ballsy cameraman (Azaria) team up to get trapped
in Madison Square Gardens.

The filmmakers' idea of genuine comic relief is to name the mayor
Ebert (rotund Michael Lerner) and have his advisor, Gene (haha),
always slap Ebert's hand away from food. Oh, look, a fat guy wants
food. The filmmakers' idea of a plot development is to have said
stupid girlfriend - who is also an aspiring anchor beauty - discover a
top secret videotape with footage of a frightened Japanese man
repeating "Gojira...Gojira..." She knows this is a top secret tape
because it is labeled such, "Top Secret", and she seems to know how
bottom-of-the-barrel her news program is because they take the bait
and air the snippet as a top story. Then Ebert wants more food! Said
broadcast winds up getting Broderick fired, so he and Pitillo have a
fight, and break up again. Who cares? Until the night before, they
hadn't seen each other for EIGHT YEARS. And when they met up again, it
was only to EXCHANGE THE WORST WRITTEN EX-LOVER TO EX-LOVER DIALOGUE
THE SCREEN HAS POSSIBLY EVER KNOWN. To quote Ebert - the critic, not
the mayor (by the way, during the two times I met the man, he was not
eating) - in his review of North, I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate this
movie. GODZILLA is an entirely charmless 139 MINUTES(!), unlike the
Japanese counterparts which inspired it. Boring as hell, seemingly
edited with a machete and some Scotch tape, weighted by a screenplay
that makes Titanic's read like Edward Albee, GODZILLA is the worst
cinematic experience I've had in years. Flamers, take note: I am not
demanding hyperrealism from a movie about a giant lizard, nor am I
requesting good dialogue, even. I'm asking for entertainment, pure and
simple: for the reported $130 million budget, I want to mainline
unadulterated summer movie fun. Not even the effects held my interest
- they turn to digital mush in too many spots.

If this is reading a little too much like one of Harry Knowles'
Ain't-It-Cool caveman test-screening reviews, my apologies. It isn't
too often a movie sparks a fire in me like GODZILLA, a steady, burning
rage. Independence Day was a terrible movie, but terribly
fun. GODZILLA's cinematogrpohy and production design can't even match
the pastel appeal of ID4's images: almost every shot is a rain-soaked
bore. (Ladies and gentlemen, let's officially seal that moratorium on
homages to Blade Runner.) Perhaps I can't fully convey why I despised
this movie so much without slipping into incoherence, but it looks
like I may not be alone in my camp: despite months of hype, the
weekend late show of GODZILLA at a brand new multiplex saw an audience
of half-capacity. If we're lucky, Godzilla's damage won't end at the
credits: it will put an end to bloated, scriptless event pictures for
a good long while.

-May, 1998

[Ben Hoffman]

Member of OFCS
Online Film Critics Society

*********************************
GODZILLA

As the ad's double entendre proclaims, "Size Does Matter" Godzilla
Is BIG.

In a little in-joke, scientist Dr. Niko Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick)
is named after Patrick Tatopoulos, the designer of the creature
Godzilla. The original creature is based on the Godzilla character
owned by and created by Toho Co. Ltd. in 1954. Another, not quite
as "in", is having New York's Mayor named Ebert (because Roger
Ebert looks a bit like like Michael Lerner who has that role). When
the Godzilla is finally taken care of, the mayor looks for ways his
administration can take credit.

In some spectacular special effects, made possible in part by new
computer graphics software and technology, the film is as real as one
could imagine. For those displaced New Yorkers like me, it really
looked as if the Chrysler Building and Brooklyn Bridge were being
toppled by the huge creature with every giant step it took, as well as
demolishing Madison Avenue. Very realistic.

The film starts with a ship at sea. As a blinding flash of lightning
and accompanying thunder crash across the screen, the ship heaves and
tosses about on huge waves. News soon reaches the world that several
ships have overturned for no apparent reason and are lost in the
ocean. In other parts of the world, investigators are baffled by
giant footprints marching across the lands of Panamanian forests,
Tahitian villages and Jamaican beaches. Dr. Tatopoulos is called in
to help solve the mystery when it is discovered that a giant animal is
wreaking destruction in Manhattan.

As in the original GODZILLA, the story is that it is nuclear radiation
that has caused the monster to grow to its present height. While
Director Emmerich enjoyed the original he was not about to make an
American remake. The story then concentrates on scariness. What
do you do about a huge creature that is like the proverbial bull in
a China shop, knocking over buildings and causing untold havoc?

Fortunately, the story, by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio and Dean Devlin
and Roland Emmerich, and the screenplay by Dean Devlin and Roland
Emmerich, made sure the characters in the story were real people. The
parts of scientist Tatopoulos, called back from Chernobyl where he was
investigating unusually fat worms caused by the irradiation at that
disaster site, and of the French insurance investigator, Philippe
Roache (Jean Reno) were written with them in mind. The Roache
character is unhappy that the French Government has tested so many
nuclear bombs in the Pacific. Other unthinking countries have done
their nuclear testing in the Pacific and elsewhere with no regard to
the inhabitants of those areas nor to the consequences. Mutations are
happening all over the globe and the fictional Godzilla is but one example.

All in all an entertaining film with some great special effects and a
more or less warmed over but adequate story. Others in the film
are Hank Azaria as an intrepid photographer, Maria Pitillo as the
love (small) interest, Harry Shearer as a newscaster who thinks he
would like her as a Washington-type "intern."

Directed by Roland Emmerich.

3 Bytes

4 Bytes = Superb
3 Bytes = Too good to miss
2 Bytes = Average
1 Byte = Save your money

Copyright 1998 Ben Hoffman

[Jeremiah Rickert]

Godzilla:

A Review

by Jeremiah Rickert

Starring: Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitilla, and Hank Azaria
Directed by: Roland Emmerich

Oh boy, it's the edge of summer, and those two guys who ruled the
summer box office two years ago are back with their uber-flick, Godzilla.
With a gigantic budget and big-name stars...well, a gigantic budget
anyway, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the team behind Stargate,
Independence Day, and now Godzilla, are going for the summer-flick
hat-trick, and if hype alone can sell a picture, they will have it.

The plot was definitely there, just enough to move the movie along,
although at times it seemed really slow. With a running time of about 2
and a half hours, yet still barely enough plot, you have to wonder if the
next Devlin/Emmerich release will be all special affects and no story at
all...why bother with that pesky story element anyway? There were a
number of jump-cuts, whenever the characters reached a decision about
something, the film suddenly jumped forward to just before it was about to
be implemented, making the transitions between grand action scenes as
short as possible, which means that the largest chunk of the movie is
action action action. Some of the editing didn't quite seem up to snuff.
The cuts were jerky at times and you'd cut away from an action shot before
it was totally finished. The editing team was a pretty good one too,
Peter Amudson (Daylight, Dragonheart, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, and SFX
work on Return of the Jedi and Empire Strikes Back) and David Siegel (who
I believe was nominated for an emmy for work on Law and Order). Despite
the pedigree of the team, I still thought the final product was not as
good as it could have been.

The plot, by the way, is about the foul and large creature that is
produced due to French nuclear testing in the French Polynesian Islands.
(That's right, we've run out of enemies, so now it's time for the French.)
The French are the first to learn about the creature's existance, when
they investigate a large fishing vessel that was attacked and sunk. They
are worried that their testing has caused whatever this thing is, and they
need to try to hush up the attack in order to protect their reputation.

After -something- with huge footprints tromps across Jamaica, our
hero, Nick Tatopoulis (Matthew Broderick) is pulled away from his exciting
job of measureing radioactive worms at Chernobyl by the U.S. Dept. of
State, who takes him to the island to examine the large prints. He is
added to a team of scientists, drafted by the govt. to try to get a bead
on what they are dealing with and how to deal with it. Hollywood must
think that all scientists are beatniks, hippies, slobs, and wierdos,
because that is what we have in our group in this film. (as played by
Vicki Lewis, Malcom Danare, and Broderick.) The creature leaves a trail
that seems to be leading to New York City, where the creature is sure to
wreak a lot of havoc.

Of course, he does hit new york, bigtime, causing a big ruckus,
panic, and a special effects extravaganza! In the city, we are introduced
to the supporting players (well, they all kinda support old 'Zilla, but
who's counting) news anchor Charles Caiman, who gets the award for the
most horrible pun, played by Harry Shearer (Simpsons, Spinal Tap) his
assistant and former college flame of Tatopoulos, Audrey Timmonds, played
by Maria Pitillo (Dear God, TV's House Rules), and her friend's husband
and network camera man Victor "animal" Palotti, played by Hank Azaria
(Gross Pointe Blanke, Birdcage, Heat). Also running around spying on the
Americans is French agent Phillipe Roche, portrayed by french actor Jean
Reno (The Professional, Mission Impossible)

The French government still wants it covered up, the army wants it
dead, and Godzilla just wants to build a nest, even if it means (and it
does) destroying most of Manhattan in the process.

The special effects are of course excellent. They are consistently
good throughout the film, and for the high price-tag they well should be.
The creature itself manages to be CGI without looking too much like CGI, a
welcome change from the recent Lost In Space, which featured a CGI
creature that looked like a cartoonist had sketched it on the film with a
colored pencil. The sound was pretty darned good as well, with lots of
good breathing, tail swooshes, and crunching buildings to entertain the
ears and the eyes. Emmerich's direction was satisfactory, and there was
actually one nice bit of foreshadowing, however obvious it may have been,
when the camera follows a dirt road that the footprints are leading down,
and then fades into a shot of a city street.

The acting is satisfactory as well, but even the "names" in the cast
don't do anything spectacular. Broderick is wooden and distant, even when
he's trying to show feelings for his lost love, Audrey. Apparently even
the oft-heard Love Theme From Godzilla cannot stir his emotional fires.
The army is, as usual, portrayed as bunch of buffoons, who can't and don't
think. They seem to choose the hard way to do things, even though every
10yr old in the audience is saying over and over "why can't they just send
a laser guided bomb after him from a high altitude." The rainy helicopter
chases were actually kinda fun, though, even if a bit far fetched. Of
course, the idea of a giant lizard is far-fetched as well. The French
mercinaries are played for laughs as well, frowning at stinky coffee and
being saddened that they couldn't find a croissant. The laughs I got out
of the film were from things not meant to be funny. When Nick is staring
into the face of Godzilla, and the love theme was playing, I accidentally
said "phone home" in an ET voice and sent the surrounding three rows into
laughter. The casting of Audrey again pokes one of my biggest movie
nerves, and that is the female leads looking 15 or 16, but actually being
28. Her acting was fine, it's just it's hard for me to visualise maturity
when the character looks 16.

Some of the other items played for laughs are the chubby Mayor Ebert
and his sidekick and assistant Gene, who try to play out the political
ramifications of Godzilla, with all the appropriate thumbs up and down.
It got old really really really quickly.

Overall, expect a typical summer flick, action, explosions, lack of
plot, cheesy characters, cheap humor, this one fits the formula to a tee.
And of course, following the lead of Lost Word, they pumped it into as
many theaters opening weekend as possible (a record amount) so by the time
the word of mouth got out, a great number of people had already plunked
down their $6-$10 to see it. Nice plan, and I expect a lot of films are
going to follow the same formula. So for what it was, it delivers, as a
piece of art...a film, it's kinda bleah. I will give them one point for
class, though, they managed to avoid a lot of bodies being ripped...blood,
guts, and I didn't hear one wet squish.

Of the $3.50 I paid for it, it was worth about $1.75

Copyright (c) 1998

--
-----------------------------------------
Jeremiah "Spassvogel" Rickert
6'7" 320 lbs of Dr. Pepper and Pez Candy.
-----------------------------------------

[Brent Goldberg]

I know Godzilla. I love Godzilla. And I can tell you, THAT AIN'T GODZILLA!

An abomination to one of the icons of sci-fi history, "Godzilla" (aka Jurassic
Park 3) is another installment in a long line of merchandise-seeking films
botched by Hollywood in the greedy scramble for big $$$. Not since last
summer's "Batman & Robin" has the public been exposed to such a sham and
disgrace of a cultured figure.

Godzilla is portrayed by a T-Rex and -- in a "Gremlins" subplot -- manages to
have a horde of raptors as offspring. Of course, there is a bare thread of a
romance plot underlying the film that has the chemistry and excitement of a
Billy/Samantha storyline.

One pleasing aspect of Godzilla is the starring of Matthew "Wargames"
Broderick. I swear, this man hasn't changed a bit in 15 years! Sheesh. "Would
you like to play a nice game of chess?"

Bottom line? If you want to see more T-Rex's and Raptors running amuck in New
York, by all means see this movie. But if you want to see a movie that has
ANYTHING at all to do with Godzilla, go to your local video store! Hollywood
-- you have shamed yourselves yet again...

Copyright 1998 by Brent Goldberg, All Rights Reserved

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[Cheng-Jih Chen]

I actually started writing this review well before seeing the movie. I
felt I had to, after watching the original "Godzilla" on Saturday
afternoon (Channel 11's Godzilla marathon), and, partially again Sunday
evening (Joe Bob Brigg's Monstervision, on TNT). This is the
Americanized, Raymond Burr playing the necessary white man in the cut
up Japanese film. The little tricks used to integrate him into this
film -- tricks that fooled me when I was ten but look laughable now (or
perhaps I'm just aware that Raymond is tacked on, and am looking for
the visible seams; I can't claim I'm more clever now than when I was
ten) -- aren't too far removed from, say, the use of Bela Legosi in
"Plan 9 From Outer Space". The actor died part way through the filming,
and, for the rest of the movie, they had some guy in a hat, with a dark
cape raised high enough to cover his face, stalking around.

The opening of "Godzilla" shows that Raymond Burr is acquainted with
some scientist's wife, who comes to him in the hospital. We see the
back of her head. A little while late, we see the front of her face,
but it's obvious this is culled from a different moment in the movie,
and that she isn't really talking to Raymond. Later, Raymond calls the
hero scientist, who gets up from his workbench and goes to the back of
his lab. Cut to some guy with an eye patch -- I'm not sure the first
shot of the scientist didn't show such a thing -- face heavily
obstructed by bubbling beakers, flasks and the other props of
stereotypical alchemy, who answers the phone and talks to Raymond.
Back in the 1950s, they simply didn't have the benefit of our
late-1990s ability to incorporate John Wayne in a beer commercial, and
Gene Kelly in a spot for Hoover vacuums. Or maybe they just didn't
care. (Joe Bob Briggs, who gives a little background to the movies
he's showing, mentioned that a couple of Americans were looking at
special effects footage for some reason or another. They came across
"Gojira", liked what they saw, and made it into an American movie for
about $100,000. Well, 1950s dollars, but cheap as far as movies go.
Arguably, a few minutes of computer graphics in the new movie cost that
much.)

Some recent movie reviews of the 1998 "Godzilla" argue that "Gojira",
the original Japanese film, is one of the better Japanese films made,
in some sense up there with Kurosawa. I wouldn't go that far, but
little models and rubber suit aside, the film is supposed to conjure up
a powerful, bleak vision of destruction and despair: Godzilla as the
embodiment of nuclear apocalypse. The clips from the original movie
that started off this American version does contain hospital scenes
that are meant to invoke memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seeing
"Gojira" would be interesting -- half the movie was sliced up to
accommodate Raymond. I should look for it in Kim's Video next time I'm
in the area.

Raymond says such obvious things: "Look at the size of those
footprints." Show, not tell.

So, I suppose a new, 1998 version has the benefit of relative
seamlessness. No need for the token American when New York is
wrecked. On the other hand, Tokyo has a resonance of the fire bombings
of World War II -- air raid sirens sound when Godzilla approaches, and
the scenes of destruction are informed by these and by the bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- which New York doesn't. At worst, we've had
Disney's invasion of Times Square and Central Park. Granted, it was
massive -- Michael Eisner made the rain go away -- but there were no
casualties except for the grass on the Great Lawn.

Anyway, yes, the various reviews I read are basically right. The new
movie compares unfavorably to its rubber suited predecessor.
Fundamentally, the movie is an overgrown "Jurassic Park"/"Lost World"
set in New York, and with a much larger monster. There are no
innovations in this movie: as noted, the influence of "Jurassic Park"
are very clear, though the baby Godzillas aren't nearly as terrifying
as velociraptors. We perhaps shouldn't expect them to be: the
velociraptors were handled by Spielberg, who once gave us "Jaws"; the
Godzilla team gave us the decidedly unscary "Independence Day".
Actually, "ID4"'s little tricks with the airplanes are simply repeated
in this new movie: the flight scenes are basically the same. [Hint to
the Godzilla team: helicopters can fly higher than buildings and large
lizards.] Finally, they wreck Madison Square Garden, but it's no worse
than, say, Michael Jordan passing through; he can be a wrathful god.

That helicopters, airplanes and tanks can hurt this Godzilla makes it
nothing more than a large, overgrown pet gecko. Fundamentally, it's an
animal. It bleeds, it can be killed. A couple well placed shots from
a tank can do it in. A bigger problem would be flushing it down the
toilet afterwards without telling the kids. [A side note: does
Godzilla taste like chicken? Being somewhat radioactive, Godzilla
steak would certainly be free of e. coli, though there might be other
problems.]

Its animal nature, its mortality, makes this Godzilla less mythic than
the original Gojira. Gojira, this invincible incarnation of nuclear
horrors, shrugs aside the army on its way to Tokyo. Godzilla 1998 can
hardly take it on the chin, and has to get away from the army through
fancy footwork instead of simply wading through they guys with rifles.
A fence of 300,000 volt high tension wires proves more a curiosity than
an obstacle to Gojira. Godzilla is hurt by this little electrical
cable that Matthew Broderick can hold in his hands. Gojira is an
embodiment of existential bleakness, a force of nature for the atomic
age, a legendary dragon with nuclear breath. Godzilla is a pest.

Regarding Matthew Broderick, I'm convinced that for the first hour of
the film he plays an idiot. The second hour shows him as an idiot
being chased by monsters. His dialog is painful to hear. Real
clunkers, not unlike Raymond Burr's observations. But even more
painful to hear is what his girlfriend says during the film. [As a
counterpoint to Idiot Broderick, I'm one of the maybe four people in
the country who saw "Infinity", this neat little film about the
physicist Richard Feynman. Broderick's roles have therefore proceeded
from Genius to Idiot in the past year. Career trajectory?] Oh,
furthering a theme that's been in Hollywood movies for far too long, it
takes a disaster to reconcile relationships. "Lost in Space" was
really about the father-son thing. "Deep Impact", which I have yet to
see, is apparently about solving family crises before they killer comet
hits; doomsday as a therapy session. In "Godzilla", it's the boy-girl
thing. At long last, they take an interest in each others work, and it
only took being chased by ersatz velociraptors to do it. Oh, and she
gets a fulfilling job along the way, too.

Godzilla having offspring isn't a new idea. Back in the late 1950s,
early 1960s, we had Godzookie, who was more like that short chubby kid
the bullies beat up on than a carnivore. [Actually, reading the
summary for that movie -- it's been ages since I'd seen it -- the story
isn't badly constructed. In this world, a little school kid is beat up
by bullies. In his mind, in his fantasy world, he travels to Monster
Island, and finds that Godzookie is similarly beaten up on. Godzilla
comes by, instills courage and confidence in Godzookie and, by proxy,
the school kid. The school kid overcomes the bullies. I like this
story and construction better than the chase through mazy hallways by
velociraptors.] How Godzilla's procreation mechanics work is explained
in neither film.

Bizarrely, there are Frenchmen in the movie. Jean Reno, who I think I
first saw as the Cleaner in "La Femme Nikita", plays some secret
service guy who's there to clean up this Godzilla mess. He's there
with a dozen Frenchman, all of whom smoke. They're hampered in their
mission because they can't get a smoking table at a restaurant.
Anyway, the whole thing is sort of bizarre. Perhaps they were there to
drive away Godzilla by acting rude? A side implication, most
definitely missing from "Gojira", is that these little nuclear messes
can be cleaned up without much fuss. The teams next mission, I assume
his next job is propping up some African despot.

Lastly, some NYC notes. You know, those moments when suspension of
disbelief fails because the film implies it's easy to get a cab in the
rain. Yes, it's nitpicky to note that the Fulton Fish Market isn't
that far south of Wall Street for the big guy to clearly walk up Broad
Street, stomping investment bankers along the way. The Brooklyn Bridge
is also not the closest bridge to the Park Avenue tunnel at 33rd
Street; the Queensborough is. [Side note: the Park Ave tunnel the
heroes are stuck in is right next to my former office. I'm sure that
Godzilla, sweeping its tail around, probably did severe damage to it.
I have to compliment the location people: they got the stores on the
west side of Park dead on. That "hey, I bought a smoothie in that
store!" feeling was there.] Oh, Manhattan bedrock isn't so deep for
Godzilla to borough around in. It's actually relatively shallow --
that's why we have sky scrappers. Similarly, the Hudson can't
accommodate a submerged sub. An even more devastating gaffe is the
debate on how to get uptown/downtown when they're in the cab. Everyone
knows the FDR construction near 23rd St. will cause havoc. There are
other things, but pointing out these locational, uh, inconsistencies
should be a communal activity.

Just before writing the 1998 portions of this review, I went to see the
New York Philharmonic give a free concert in the Cathedral of St. John
the Divine. It was a really long line, wrapping around two long
blocks. There was no such line for Godzilla, but then I realized that,
say, next year, there won't be really long lines for the new "Star
Wars" movie. The bonding, formative experience of standing in a long
line to buy tickets to a Star Wars movie will have been done away with
by the modern multiplex, which can show Ewan McGregor making light
saber sounds every hour, has killed the line. Sometimes old things are
better.

--

[Ted Prigge]

GODZILLA (1998)
A Film Review by Ted Prigge
Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge

Director: Roland Emmerich
Writers: Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin (story by Emmerich, Devlin, Ted
Elliott, and Terry Rossio)
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria, Kevin
Dunn, Harry Shearer, Michael Lerner, Lorry Goldman, Vicki Lewis, Doug
Savant, Arabella Field

All "Godzilla" needs to really be is 2 hours of big, loud, entertainment
that somehow taps in to the part of our psyche that loves to be frigthened
by cataclysmic scares, and soothed by massive destruction (preferably of
Manhattan). I won't say this for many films, but when I heard they were
making this flick, all I wanted was a couple semi-interesting characters
there for some human and comic relief, and a whole lot of destruction.
Godzilla, you have all of Manhattan island to play with: go wreck some shit
up.

We get a little bit of this towards the end, when, in the last, oh, 30
minutes, the film takes off into a visceral, intense, and downright
thrilling experience, thanks to a twist in the story where the four main
protagonists find what has to be about a hundred Godzilla eggs in Madison
Square Garden, all within seconds of hatching. From this point on, the
film takes off into, yes, a rip-off of "Jurassic Park," but still an
edge-of-your-seat rollar coaster ride of gradual tension, not meaning that
the tension increases, but that the quality of the tension increases. By
the time the four protaonists have hopped into a cab and are driving as
fast as they can from a pursuing Godzilla, I was actually pretty into the
film.

What "Godzilla" needs is more of this, and less of other things, like most
of what occurs in the first hour and forty minutes or so of the film, which
is redundant, moronic crap on a stick. Do we need a half-assed romantic
subplot? Do we need all the cheap attacks on Godzilla if they're not
riveting? Here's a film with about 160 million or so dollars, with a great
locale, and they do almost nothing with it. "Godzilla" is a creature
feature: it needs to act like one.

Director Roland Emmerich and Producer Dean Devlin, the guys behind the
shitty "Stargate" and the
fun-ONLY-if-you're-in-a-packed-theater-of-participating-members
"Independence Day," have written and crafted the film, but the real
brilliance behind the film is in the advertising. For a year, anyone who's
seen a movie in a theater has been munundated with countless teaser
trailers for this flick, which featured only scattered, brief shots of the
beast, and ensured that when the film actually arrived, it would be big, no
matter what the story is. You ask someone if they're going to see
"Godzilla," and they say, "yeah," but if you ask them why, they can't
answer that. Hell, I paid to see this and I don't know why I bothered.

This would be all cool if the film delivered. James Cameron teased
audiences similarly in 1990 to 1991 for his sequel to "The Terminator," but
at least he delivered a film which is one of the most amazing cinematic
experiences of the decade...and he was able to squeeze in tons of
breathtaking, intense action while still creating characters we care about,
and even lots of depth on humanity. "Godzilla," for all its hype and
grandness, is suprisingly bland and dull.

That goes for Godzilla himself, as well. Emmerich and Devlin sure have a
knack for stealing ideas for their big delivieries, making them come off as
nothing short of anticlimactic. In "Stargate," the military guys travel
through a warp through billions of light years to arrive in...an Egyptian
desert...populated by humans. In "Independence Day," the aliens travel
light years to conquer Earth, and when we see them, they're...octopus men.
When we see finally see Godzilla after all the quick tease shots of him,
building up the first real look at him, he's...Tyranosaurus Rex. Sure, the
old Godzilla was a man in a plastic costume, and this is a multi-million
dollar special effect that looks real, but it has lost all its wit in the
process. Gone is the face that shoots up, and the perfectly erect back,
and the firebreathing done without so much as leaning over, and here is the
T-Rex, straight from "Jurassic Park," complete with the same biting
technique. Of course he's terrifying, but he's not Godzilla.

Even his offspring suffer the same fate: they're a bunch of raptors, and
all their movements are stolen completely from "Jurassic Park." The big
differences: there's more of them, and they have scales on their backs,
just like their parent. Even the scene where we see all the eggs is stolen
from the ending of "Aliens." Luckily enough, they're still frightening to
look at, and their scenes are done well enough that we forget that their
carbon copies, if only for a brief couple seconds here and there when the
action and tension has subsisted for a bit.

Oh, yes, and there's a plot, or at least an attempt at one that is in place
of the first 100 minutes or so. Godzilla is the result of nuclear testing
around French Polynesia, where we see a couple lizards looking one at the
blasts (so where are the others? guess there's gonna be a couple sequels),
and when he begins to destroy some ships and whatnot off the coast, they
bring in nuclear scientist, Dr. Nick Tantopopolous (Matthew Broderick, who
needed the attention, I guess), who was busy studying worm mutations up in
Chernobyl (they call him "the worm guy"). He concludes that he's a victim
of nuclear testing just as Godzilla swims on over to the Big Apple (why the
Big Apple? because it...uh...it has lots of stuff he can destroy, I
guess...or because Emmerich and Devlin don't know where else to stage
destruction anymore).

Also in the story is Nick's ex-college sweetie, Audrey Timmonds (Maria
Pitillo, who brings out the worst of sitcom style acting), who works for a
pompous news anchor (are there any other kind?), Charles Caiman (Harry
Shearer, the voice of Mr. Burns and others on "The Simpsons"), and is
trying to break into anchordom, regardless of the fact that she is terrible
at it. And there's her friend's husband, Victor "Animal" Polotti (Hank
Azaria, voice of Apu, Chief Wiggum, and several others on "The Simpsons"),
a wild cameraman who is just trying to get the best footage of the
beast...at any cost. Soon, they're working along with Nick, trying to help
him stop the beast and his eggs.

Since the military and local government are exercising their stupidity in
handling the situation, in comes some French Secret Servicemen, led by a
man named Philippe (Jean Reno, known to American audiences as the
helicopter pilot in "Mission: Impossible"), who are trying to destroy the
eggs as well as the beast so that their government doesn't suffer because
of their nuclear testing. They are actually kinda nicely presented, shown
in brief shots doing things we don't understand until later on in the film,
although the film really shows how culturally ignorant it is in terms of
their presentation and running gags: all the french guy, with the exception
of Reno, are named Jean-something, and all they talk about is the lack of
croissants and how bad the "French Roast" coffee is. Yes, all french
people are like that, I forgot.

After awhile, the film slips into a cycle: the military tries to stop
Godzilla in the dumbest ways possible (my favorite was the submarines in
the East River), Godzilla runs and ends up destroying them, and the
military freaks out while Nick tries to tell them what's going on and is
subsequently ignored. Only when it changes its pace a bit in the last half
hour does it really take off, and one almost forgets how deadly dull the
first hour and forty minutes were.

It also doesn't help that this film has an IQ of about 4 1/2. The script
is one of the worst of all big budget flicks, filled with terrible
dialogue, and some really awful plotting. The mystery of what those French
guys is intriguing for a bit, but soon becomes annoying, and when revealed
what their mission really is, it becomes anti-climactic. The film takes
itself so deadly seriously (a big mistake - it's a Godzilla flick!) that
when any jokes pop up, they're distracting (the worst, most unfunny running
gag is the fact that the Mayor looks like Roger Ebert, and is named Mayor
Ebert, and his chief aide is named Gene, and looks like Gene Siskel -
obviously a totally unsubtle attempt at revenge by the creators of the
film, who's past films were panned by them). Also not working at all is
its attempt at being "King Kong" and humanizing Godzilla from time to time,
then copping itself out and making his killers into heroes. And then
there's the romantic subplot of "Will Nick and Audrey
*ohmygodohmygodohmygod* get back together?!?!" I say if you're not going
to make a romantic subplot, the thing that every film seems to need by the
Law of Big Budget Movies, I dunno, interesting, then you might as well
trash it. Then we wouldn't be burdened by the acting by Maria Pitillo
(ugh).

Also sadly, no actors really take off. Matthew Broderick tries to say
Emmerich and Devlin's awful dialogue with a straight face, but can't help
it that his character is less than paper thin. Even comic geniuses like
Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer aren't given good roles...in fact, Hank's
character's chief personality trait is his Brooklyn accent. The only who
actually does do a great job is Jean Reno, who, sure, plays his role
compeltely straight, but actually makes everything he does believable, and
also a blast. Jean actually gives a better performance than the lizard
himself. Still, all the characters are pretty dull, and the result is an
empty experience, filled with little of anything. The only reason we care
about the people inside the cab in the end is because 3/4 of them are
Matthew Broderick, Hank Azaria, and Jean Reno. At least in "Independence
Day" they bothered to bring us interesting characters; here, they just want
to show off Godzilla, in all his anticlimactic glory.

The last half hour makes up partially for a lot of the crap that goes on
for most of the film, even if that partiality is minute. The final action
sequence IS a great action sequence: riveting, intense, wild, proposterous,
exhilerating. If the film had more of these, it would be great. I won't
say this for many films, but "Godzilla" needs more carnage and intenisty,
and less of anything else it has.

MY RATING (out of 4): **

Homepage at: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/8335/

[Rick Ferguson]

GODZILLA

Starring Matthew Broderick, Maria Pitillo and Jean Reno

Written by Dean Devlin, Terry Elliott, Rolland Emmerich and Terry Rossio

Directed by Roland Emmerich

I can probably come up with a dozen reasons why GODZILLA doesn't work.
We could start with the script, which redefines the term "lightweight."
Then we could move to the performances: Matthew Broderick's nutty
professor routine never quite works, Hank Azaria thinks he's a
recurring character on "Sesame Street," and Maria Pitillo's
performance has the weight and texture of that powdery sugar they
sprinkle on funnel cakes at the county fair. The special effects, while
serviceable, in no way push the envelope. The filmmakers have even taken
it upon themselves to not only alter Godzilla's appearance, but to
change the whole concept of the beast from its original Japanese
incarnation. The script even resorts to lame Siskel and Ebert jokes. I
could go on. But despite its many flaws, I have to admit that I kind of
dug it. The film walks a tightrope, to be sure, and very nearly plunges
into awfulness at every turn. But you know what? If I was twelve years
old, I would have walked away completely satisfied. When you're
talking about a Godzilla movie, isn't that what counts?

Much has been written about how the original 1954 Japanese film GOJIRA,
debuting not even ten years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, represented
the self-inflicted punishment the Japanese felt they deserved after
losing WWII, as well as their dreadful fear of the Atom bomb. But little
has been said about why the films caught on in the States. To the
millions of American boys and girls who watched Godzilla rampage through
Tokyo on low-powered UHF stations in the 70's, Godzilla represented
the primitive, destructive Id which our parents and school teachers
demanded we keep in check. What kid didn't stomp on his army men in
the backyard sandbox, fantasizing that he was 300 feet tall and able to
do pretty much whatever the hell he wanted? Godzilla was just a big ugly
kid throwing a temper tantrum-- and he had atomic breath to boot.

So INDEPENDENCE DAY creators Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the latest
inheritors of the Godzilla legend, had a pretty clear task before them.
Give us a cool monster, updated for the Digital Age, have him destroy a
major metropolitan area, give him some army men to stomp on, and come up
with a couple of semi-interesting human characters to help us pass the
time while we're waiting for the Big Guy to show up. Not too tough
when you have Sony footing the bill, right?

The first calculated risk they take, as previously noted, is to
completely alter the whole concept of the Lizard King. The Japanese
version was nigh on invulnerable; he'd stand there and let the
Japanese army take its best shot, then he'd wipe them all out with one
blast of his atomic breath and continue on toward Tokyo. The new
Godzilla, while equal in size, is more vulnerable and considerably more
mobile than his predecessor. When the army starts shooting at this guy,
he doesn't stick around' he hauls ass. Most of the destruction he
wreaks on Manhattan is more or less a side effect of his need to outrun
missiles and jet planes. Consequently, it takes a long time before we
get a good look at him. We see a tail here, a foot there, but I kept
waiting for a money shot, which never really happens. When we do get a
good look at him, he turns out to be much more lizard-like than the old
version. I can only compare the shock of his new look to the shock of
comparing the new VW Beetle to the old model' not better, exactly, but
different.

This Godzilla can also burrow, and ends up hiding from his human hunters
deep in the New York City subway system. This turn of events leads us
into a long dry stretch where we're forced to spend a lot of time with
the sketchy human characters while they try to outwit a horde of baby
Zillas which have hatched from eggs laid by their asexual parent in
Madison Square Garden. The whole baby Zilla stretch is a dead rip-off of
the Veloceraptor attack in JURASSIC PARK, only the special effects
aren't as good. These scenes are saved, however, by the presence of
Jean Reno, who plays a steely French secret agent who leads a team of
commandos dispatched by the French government to kill Godzilla after
they unwittingly created him with their nuclear tests in the Atlantic.
As if the French would give a damn whether Manhattan gets flattened or
not' they'd be laughing so hard that champagne would squirt out of
their noses.

Broderick, as nerdy scientist Niko Testopoulos, is a game presence, but
he really wouldn't be missed if someone else had taken the part. The
rest of the cast is fairly anonymous, which reminds us of how much the
success of INDEPENDENCE DAY depended on Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum.
Devlin and Emmerich reasoned, not illogically, that they could forgo
star power, since Godzilla was the only star they needed. But then they
limit Godzilla's screen time to a couple of extended cameos. It
doesn't make sense, and yet it worked. There's just enough humor,
just enough Godzilla, just enough destruction and mayhem to pull it off.

Even so, I couldn't fault anybody for giving this picture a
thumbs-down. I bought it; you may not. Devlin and Emmerich are competent
filmmakers, but their true genius lies in their ability to take a high
concept and market the shit out of it until you feel like an utter rube
if you don't pony up your eight dollars at the box office to take the
ride. It's almost more fun to watch them market a film than it is to
sit through the finished product. GODZILLA delivers, though just barely.
The twelve-year old in me had a good time, anyway.

GRADE: C+

-----------------------------------------------------------

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[Steve Kong]

GODZILLA (1998)

A film review by Steve Kong
Edited by Cher Johnson
Copyright 1998 Steve Kong

Knowing that Godzilla came from the "creative" team of Emmerich and Devlin
- the two dudes that brought us Independence Day and Stargate - I stepped
into my screening of Godzilla with: 1) my brain turned "off", 2) ready for
an adrenaline rush, and 3) ready for a roller coaster ride.

Let's just say that I walked out of the movie thinking that their horrible
Independence Day was a masterpiece compared to Godzilla and I did not have
a hint of adrenaline rushing through my blood stream. If Godzilla were a
roller coaster ride, it would be a ride with a few loops, some
not-so-steep-drops, and miles of level track before the next excitement.

Some nuclear testing done in the middle of nowhere creates Godzilla --
who's not looking quite like himself in this US version. For some reason
Godzilla wants to move off his little island, and where does he want to go?
New York, New York of course - the city so nice, they named it twice. All
animals have migratory periods and it is time for Godzilla to migrate, but
why?

"Why" does not matter to the US Army because all it wants is to annihilate
Godzilla. Biologist Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) has other ideas,
though. He thinks that Godzilla - thanks, marketing department at
Sony/Tristar for revealing this during the trailers - is pregnant and wants
to nest in New York. The Army thinks Tatopoulos is crazy, not because
Tatopoulos is a nut, but because this is how it always works in the movies:
The guy who has the right idea is the guy who is always treated like an idiot.

Unbeknownst to the US Army, the French Secret Service is also interested in
why Godzilla is in New York. A group of French Secret Service agents, led
by Philippe Roche (Jean Reno), is out to destroy Godzilla too.

Because this script comes from Emmerich and Devlin, there has to be a
non-emotional, one sided, "love" story that tries to pull our chains long
enough to make us cry. It seems that a reporter want-to-be, Audrey Timmonds
(Maria Pitillo), was Tatopoulos' love interest eight years ago in college.
She sees him on TV and tries to re-light the romance between them.

I really wanted to like Godzilla. I grew up watching the corny and cheezy
TV shows as a kid. I loved it when Godzilla - obvious to even a kid that it
was a guy in a rubber suit, but hey, Godzilla was cool - ran through cities
roasting people, buildings, and military with his breath of fire. In
Emmerich and Devlin's Godzilla, the big guy only gets to use his fiery
breath twice! This is a complete disappointment.

Godzilla is held back by two things: a weak script and horrible acting.
Script? What script? Like Independence Day, Emmerich and Devlin have penned
a script that sounds, and feels, like a fourth grader wrote it. The
characters excel at speaking cliched lines and the action is far and few. I
disliked Independence Day because of its weak script, but the Independence
Day script is Shakespeare compared to Godzilla.

As I watched Matthew Broderick on screen, I kept wondering if his
performance was purposely bad or if he's lost his acting ability. At best,
Broderick looks like a freshman drama student reading from cue cards. At
worst, it looks as if Broderick did not want to be in the production was
trying everything he could to be fired. Either way, Broderick, who we have
to follow throughout the film, gives a bad performance.

Jean Reno escapes unscathed; he did a decent job with his part as the
French Secret Serviceman. There were two roles that disgusted me and were
supposedly comic relief for the film. These were New York Mayor Ebert, and
his assistant, Gene. One was chubby with white hair and the other was
skinny and bald and they both like to use their thumbs; you get it? The
first time these characters took the screen I chuckled. The second time
they graced the screen I smiled. The third time I thought the joke was
getting old. After the third time, I stopped counting. These two roles did
nothing for the "story line," wasted screen time, and served only as an
in-joke for Emmerich and Devlin. Like everything else in Godzilla, this
didn't work because it was used in excess.

As for Godzilla, the effects are good, but nothing new. Emmerich and Devlin
chose to stay with the tried and true computer graphics for Godzilla. Sure,
Godzilla looks ferocious in the first attack on the Big Apple, but, after a
few more shots of him, he gets boring. The film was shot in constant rain
to hide the flaws of putting such a huge beast in a cityscape, and this
rain detracts from the total effect of the film. Godzilla just looks
generic on screen. Skip ahead to the next paragraph if you don't want to
know why Godzilla comes to New York. Godzilla's "babies," which look
suspiciously like the raptors from Jurassic Park and Lost World, are OK. At
times these little babies are so computer generated and move in such
synchronocity that they look like the squad of cheerleaders from the local
high school. This takes away heavily from the scare factor.

So what? Experience with Independence Day tells us that there are going to
be lulls in a Emmerich and Devlin film. But there's always spectacular
adrenaline pumping action scenes, right? Wrong. Emmerich must have had a
fluke with Independence Day because the action and the "scary" scenes in
Godzilla brought on more yawning than it did jumping from seats. Spielberg,
who did the two Jurassic Park films, shows that he knows how to bring on
the scares with his dinosaurs. Emmerich shows that he is just a hack at it.
Godzilla stands taller than a high rise, he runs faster than Apache
helicopters, and he breathes fire, yet Emmerich is never able to make the
tension level in the theatre rise higher than that in a convalescent home.

As for the movie score, there are three things that can make a score
distracting: it can be too loud, it can come at the wrong moments, and it
can sound so borrowed from another film leaving the audience wondering
which film the score came from. David Arnold, whose Tomorrow Never Dies
score I really enjoyed, comes to work with Emmerich and Devlin again.
Arnold makes one mistake with his Godzilla score; it sounds too much like
Mark Mancina's Speed music. There are points in the film where it sounds
like Arnold has taken directly from Mancina's work. And for me it was quite
distracting for half the movie because I couldn't figure out where I had
heard the tune.

But, in the end, nothing I or any of my fellow film critics can say that
will dissuade anyone from seeing this awful piece of filmmaking. The studio
hype is all that counts nowadays and the hype for Godzilla was huge. I
doubt even bad word-of-mouth from the average filmgoer will dissuade any of
their friends from seeing Godzilla - curiosity will prevail in this case.
Godzilla runs a whopping two hours and 12 minutes, which is too long for
this type of movie. Had Emmerich cut some of the non-essential stuff this
might have been a fun ride. Had Emmerich and Devlin written a smarter
script that doesn't try to create stories for one-dimensional characters,
this might have been a fun ride. But, I digress, this is a Emmerich and
Devlin film we're talking about and they love excess. Skip Godzilla.

Size Does NOT Matter - Godzilla proves this. It's quality that matters and
Godzilla has none of that. Skip, skip, skip.

---
Steve Kong rev...@boiled.sbay.org
reviews from a guy who loves the cinema
http://boiled.sbay.org/boiled/

[Mark R Leeper]

GODZILLA
A film review by Mark R. Leeper

Capsule: This film has little to do with the
Japanese monster Godzilla. A mutated iguana grown
to giant proportions gets loose in New York City.
Most of the thrills are really warmed-over JURASSIC
PARK. Matthew Broderick is wasted, but Jean Reno
has some nice moments. The comic approach too
often falls flat and does little for the story.
Rating: 4 (0 to 10), low 0 (-4 to +4)

In 1954 there was an anti-American uproar in Japan. A Japanese
fishing boat had unknowingly caught fish contaminated by an American
nuclear test. The fishermen had been sickened but not in time to stop
the fish from going to market. Japanese newspapers called the incident
another American atomic attack on Japan. The Toho film company took
outrage from this incident as inspiration. That combined with the
recent successes of the film THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS and the re-
release of KING KONG inspired them to make their own monster movie.
This was the bleak and very angry film GOJIRA. In the story Gojira was
a mythical beast identified with a 200-foot radioactive dinosaur who
comes out of the Pacific. Made on a very small post-war budget, it
very ingeniously stretched some inexpensive special effects to massive
effect. Some of the sets initially used wax miniatures of large
structures to save money. Under harsh studio lights these props wilted
and melted. As an inspiration an aerosol spray was added to the hand
puppet that was Gojira's head together with the wilt effect combined so
Gojira had breath that would fry chicken.

American film entrepreneur Joseph E. Levine saw GOJIRA and seemed
oblivious to the anti-American tenor of the film. He crudely added
additional footage with American actor Raymond Burr. The name "GOJIRA"
probably sounded too Japanese for a country that had so recently been
fought a vicious war with Japan, so the name of the monster was
slightly modified to be less Japanese sounding but to still fit the
same lip movements. The resulting film was redubbed GODZILLA, KING OF
THE MONSTERS. The Americans turned this little anti-American film into
a big international success, the first such success that there had ever
been in the Japanese film industry. Godzilla has remained an enduring
character in Japanese film, even as the character has been repeatedly
modified. Two series of monster films have been built around him.
Finally it was decided little more could be milked from the character,
and Toho killed him off and licensed the copyright to be used by other
studios. Roland Emmerich who made the films STARGATE and INDEPENDENCE
DAY apparently wanted to do his own giant monster film. No name they
could give their creature would have the marquee value of calling their
beast Godzilla.

While the new Godzilla may indeed have been inspired by Toho's
monster, the thing that they have ended up with has more differences
than similarities. The new Godzilla is a mutant marine iguana owing
its unusual genetics to French nuclear testing in French Polynesia.
(Incidentally, there are no marine lizards in French Polynesia. The
only marine lizard in the world is the marine iguana, and it is found
only in the Galapagos Islands.) The creature, who would appear to be
about a hundred feet high, with powerful enough hind legs that it walks
bipedally, though bent over. The massive creature destroys a number of
boats on its way from Polynesia to New York City, fulfilling a mission
of his own.

Called in to investigate is Dr. Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew
Broderick), an expert in atomic mutation called from a three-year study
of earthworm mutation at Chernobyl. Nick follows in the wake of
destruction left by the never-seen titanic beast destroying ships.
Also following in the wake seems to be a sort of French secret agent,
Philippe Roche played Jean Reno of LEON (in the US: THE PROFESSIONAL)
and of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.

A full scale Godzilla movie with the sort of quality special
effects that the Japanese could not afford to lavish on the film was,
at least for me, an exciting idea. Unfortunately, this was not the
film I was hoping for. The approach of GODZILLA is intended to be in
large part comic, but only Jean Reno manages to make the humor really
funny. Michael Lerner plays New York City Mayor Ebert and is made up
to look like Roger Ebert. His assistant is Gene and looks just enough
like Gene Siskel for us to realize that that is the point of the joke.
But the joke just falls flat as often as it is used. As with
INDEPENDENCE DAY there are several scenes that are homage to previous
films, also just not very amusing. The film painfully lacks logic.
People do some totally unmotivated actions to keep the plot going,
though it often slows to a snail's pace. Or the plot will move forward
by contrivance. Nico suddenly get the urge to do a very specialized
chemical test on Godzilla's blood. It turns out he is looking for a
result he apparently had no reason to suspect and which on the face of
it seems impossible. But of course it turns out to be just the key
chemical test to move the plot forward. Many of the effects and the
thrill scenes are borrowed directly from JURASSIC PARK. The love story
awkwardly thrown into the mix is totally superfluous. The empty
plotting and failed humor attempts are certainly not new to Godzilla
films, but it was hoped that they would be left behind with the low-
budget special effects flaws.

The Japanese I have talked to have been anxious to see what
GODZILLA was to be like with good effects and a serious plot. I am
sorry to say that I expect that they will be disappointed. I rate this
one a disappointing 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low 0 on the -4 to +4
scale.

Mark R. Leeper
mle...@lucent.com
Copyright 1998 Mark R. Leeper

[Jeff Pidgeon]

BIG, BAD 'GODZILLA'

a review by Jeff ("spoilers") Pidgeon

If you've never seen "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "Jaws",
"Jurassic Park", "Aliens" or "The Professional", you might be find the latest
remake of "Godzilla" tolerable. For me, Roland ("ID4") Emmerich and Dean Dev-
lin's latest super-production was yet another patchwork quilt of lifted shots
and scenes from several other films. One might expect a certain amount of
old familiar feelings -- this is after all, a remake; but it's mostly that
and only that; a huge bundle of predictable moments delivered with plenty of
carnage but not much excitement.
It starts out promisingly -- creepy titles of video nuclear testing
footage all shot in a nasty toxic yellow color over David Arnold's ominous
score (the credits grow as we watch them) -- but almost from the moment the
film gets underway (with an attack on a Japanese fishing trawler), everything
feels trumped-up and cloned, as if the sole motivation for the film was to
out-do every other film in existence: "Oh, so the shark in 'Jaws' attacks a
little boat?" "Well, we'll have Godzilla attack a BIG boat!" "The shark drags
one boat around?" "We'll have our beastie drag THREE!!" "Terrific!!" A couple
of these Spielberg-esque attacks, and we're on our way. Using this "Close
Encounters" technique of hiding The Big Surprise from view for the first
half hour or so works well when you're not really sure what you're going to
get at the end (i.e. little ships and -- whoa! -- the mothership!), but here,
since we do know, it mostly builds impatience to see The Monster in The City.
Like "ID4", "Godzilla" has a number of plots running at once: Nick
Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) tries to save New York from getting completely
squashed while seeing if he really is still estranged from his one-time
-fiancee/aspiring reporter Audrey Timmonds (Maria Pitillo, who plays one of
those characters that you frequently pray will get stepped on or eaten).
Audrey is trying to decide between Love and Her Career, having stolen a video-
tape of Godzilla's exposition and leaked it to the press. Animal (Hank Azar-
ia) and Lucy (Arabella Field) seem to exist to round out a "Twister"-esque
band of characters with cartoonish Noo Yawk accents thrown in for flavor.
Philippe Roche (Jean Reno) plays a sinister member of the French secret ser-
vice who at first works against, then alongside our main characters to defeat
the creature. Apparently, French atomic tests were responsible for the darn
thing, and they want to cover it up. Good luck convincing everybody that
those crushed buildings were just swamp gas, guys! New York mayor Roger Ebert
(Michael Lerner) -- yes, he has a balding assistant named Gene and they fight
all the time -- butts heads with the the Main Army Guy (Kevin Dunn) and with
Nick over whether or not Godzilla is actually Goddess-zilla, or Godzillette;
are eggs being laid somewhere on Manhattan? Of course!
We're even nudged to empathize -- her rampage is actually just Mommy
trying to raise her vicious, blood-thirsty little chicks in peace. Aww!
Sorry folks, I thought they should have soaked that whole "Lost World" island
in nerve gas. I mean, these aren't spotted owls we're talking about here --
these are HUGE, CARNIVOROUS MONSTERS THAT BREATHE RADIOACTIVE FIRE! Kong and
Frankenstein clearly weren't violent unless provoked, and they were certainly
happy left in their own territory. They didn't go building nests in Madison
Square Garden! Sorry! No sympathy!
This is spectacle on such a grand scale that the quality is stretched
pretty thin. Most of the technical work in the film remains firmly in the
middle ground -- not pie-plate awful, nor ground-breaking innovation. Most
of "Godzilla"'s effect's work feels at best uninspired and at worst rushed to
completion. Much like "Lost In Space", the overall effect that the filmmakers
seem to be reaching for is a benumbed awe rather than any sort of suspenseful
rhythm or build.
To be fair, a couple of the effects sequences are built on entertain-
ing ideas -- Godzillette isn't invulnerable in this film, she's just really
fast -- fast enough to evade surface-to-air missiles and underwater torpedoes
(Whether you want to buy this is another thing, but it makes for a nice vari-
ation, as opposed to the our-weapons-don't-seem-to-hurt-it stuff). I liked
the way the fire-breathing was suggested rather than blatant, and the cab
chase in Manhattan (culminating on the Brooklyn Bridge) caught my eye as de-
cent spectacle. Vicki Lewis plays a cute scientist that I was hoping to see
more of, but was squashed beneath the wheels of the central romance.
Most of these moments, though, are glints on a two-hour-plus stretch
of asphalt. The film's sense of humor falls flat the vast majority of the
time, and its attempts to connect you with its characters induce wincing.
Most of my friends who are Godzilla fans say that it isn't a Godzilla movie.
Others say it's more of a remake of "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" than "God-
zilla". Not being all that familiar with those films, I can't say. But
there's a lot of books I would recommend you start reading with those two
hours that you'll save by not seeing "Godzilla". Not Recommended.

--

- Jeff "When I'm Finished With You, They'll Be Stumbling Over YOU In The Dark" Pidgeon

[David N. Butterworth]

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
d...@mail.med.upenn.edu

[Michael Redman]

Godzilla, Godawful

Godzilla
A Film Review By Michael Redman
Copyright 1998 By Michael Redman

* (out of ****)
In this re-make of the 1954 Japanese monster film, Godzilla is transformed
into a "Jurassic Park" copy who swims from the South Pacific to New York for
no real reason and trashes the town. Although some of the destruction is
entertaining for a while, it gets old fast.
The film often makes no sense (a several-hundred foot tall beast hides in
subway tunnels), sports second-rate effects (the baby Godzillas seem to be one
computer effect multiplied on the screen), lame jokes (Mayor Ebert and his
assistant Gene are never funny), horrendous acting (even Matthew Broderick is
dull) and an unbelievable love story (why would anyone want to get back
together with Maria Pitillo's character?).

There are other elements of the film that fall flat, but going on would just
be a waste of good words. Only for die-hard creature feature fans, this
might be fun if you could check your brain at the door. I couldn't.

(Michael Redman has written this column for 23 years and has seldom had a more
disorienting cinematic experience than seeing both "Fear And Loathing" and
"Godzilla" in the same evening.)

[This appeared in the 5/28/98 "Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana.
Michael Redman can be contacted at red...@bvoice.com]

--
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