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A REVIEW BY BOB SINCLAR 05/28/1998
I just wanted to take this opportunity to cite one of the great contemporary writer-singer of our times: Max Cavalera, former Sepultura lead singer. The exact same guy who came up with the great lyrics “when you go down, motherfucker… you go down fighting, motherfucker”
WOW did you feel the excitement building up during the 10 minutes previews before this one? That was quite something. It was the first big release of the summer season and it is in the great tradition of the summer movie genre aka, the: “man! that really stinks after all genre”. My excitement level was very high, what I call a imminent-erection excitement level. Hence, it made me a bad critic to be fucking with.
Actually Godzilla is not that bad at all. It gave me pretty much a whole bunch of mixed good and terrible feelings, so at least it gave me some feelings which left me no time to do some sleeping around in the theater.
Godzilla is the story of a giant lizard mutated after strong exposure to post French nuclear testing radiations. The French government as well as the entire US army and a couple of scientists and journalists are thrown in the mixture and try to support a horrifyingly weak story line. This whole thing is quite simple indeed. In this Americanized version of Godzilla the lizard figured he’d go to New York because he thought it’d be a pretty cool place to do some destruction and then that’s about it. The humans are all pissed and try to take him down and they succeed in the end. Surprise! This is not a happy ending, Roland, real German director… get this. Godzilla is like a metaphor on nature’s answering to man’s attempts to destroy it. Godzilla is never depicted as a wicked creature and I think against the writers’ will. Godzilla is just there, he’s just this big lizard thing who ends up in New York for no particular reason and he’s just embarrassed in that environment. It’s not like he came here to kill people and destroy stuff. He doesn’t give a shit, that animal. But his gigantic size makes him step on people and shit against his will. I am afraid the writers never really got that right and then in the end since the lizard has to die and they have to come up with a happy ending, they make a noticeable switch in the creature’s behavior towards an aggressive “mode” which makes him look like a bad copy of the t-rex in Jurassic park, and not the interesting nature abnormality he used to be anymore. It becomes then acceptable to kill him and end the disaster. I’m not so sure about that…
Let’s say a word about the human being characters. This is where it gets really bad. Since nobody gives a fuck about Hiroshima anymore, Emmerich & Co. figured they’d get the French involved in the unfortunate creation of Godzilla. Why give him a Japanese name if it’s French a creation? Why not Grozillard or Godzilbert. Anyway the French send their whole 5 secret service agents, to stop the beast and clean up their act. Jean Reno is the head of this operation and maybe the most adequate character in this whole thing. The problem is. Not only must he battle against a skyscraper-sized lizard, but he also has to battle against a whole bunch of lame lines throughout the entire film. What a waste! There would have been a lot of good jokes to do about being French in the US. But here what they give Reno is just ONE joke on how bad coffee is in America. And he has to improvise on the same joke all the time. Well, shit it’s not even a joke, coffee really is bad. Maybe the only funny thing they came up with with the French is when a group of very French looking agents (I know what I’m talking about) try to look more American with a simple trick: chewing gum. That was funny. But that’s it… Nothing else is funny despite the multiple attempts. This movie is just a concentration of horrible dialogue writing. It’s like, welcome to bullshit idiotic screenwriting 101 today we’ll study a scene of Godzilla, featuring the finest German pseudo-humor… hmmm, fuck it let’s study the whole movie that’s what bullshit idiotic writing is all about anyway.
All the other cast members are pretty much just there, trying to give an excuse to Emmerich not to show only special effects for the whole 2 hours. The dialogue is composed exclusively with one or two liners. Explanation, the movie has to be translated quickly in any language to make it all over the world this summer. Broderick plays a very innocent looking character. And he’s been playing the same character his entire career. I think what happens is that he knows the character very well by now and instead of trying to bother taking time to learn another character he finds roles where he can play the exact same guy… only the new profession of the character requires some adaptation. So, I guess, that’s when the actual acting is involved. To give an example, that’s pretty much the same story with Tom Cruise and his “ultimate winner person” creation. The other cast members include a bimbo with a fairly important screen time, another bimbo with less screen time and some dudes including a stupid military man played by a stupid Melrose Place star. Now what the hell is the problem with this military guy… what is he trying to do here?? Is he supposed to be a dumb wuss from Melrose place? I don’t quite know. I don’t think the actor understood his role and knew where to go with it. He gets to use the overused summer movie line… “We’re gonna need bigger something something”. Replace something something with a word that might relate to your movie and you get a summer movie joke. Is this supposed to be the ultimate funny one-liner? I feel like I heard this one a hundred times already. What a fucking rip off.
I was happy to see the funny reviewers Ebert and Siskel finally in their favorite movie genre as respectively the mayor of New York and his assistant… but hey! Wait a minute… it’s not them. Well, I only see one explanation. They probably sucked too much when they auditioned to play themselves and they had to be replaced with bad actors. Those two are actually respectable most of the time because they have the power of TV broadcasting and also, they happen to make sense from time to time.
What was good in the movie… The special effects. The special effects ARE the star. Now this is as good when it comes to create imaginary events as Titanic was good to recreate real events. All the action scenes pack a lot of energy and some very interesting shots. There are some beautiful stunts, which are almost always totally believable. This is an excellent point. Creating reality out of something most likely impossible. As a matter of fact, anything that happens in this movie is believable. This is exactly what reality would be if a giant lizard were to enter New York City. The film is hopefully packed with a lot of these big action scenes, which are each more beautiful than the other. The scene where a squad of choppers chases Godzilla between NY skyscrapers is particularly excellent. It makes you feel like you’re inside the action. And you might even catch yourself saying out loud in the theater “WOW. motherf… oh, okay”. There is no violence in this movie… no blood, no suspense, no scare… but a huge deal of impressive and beautiful images. Godzilla’s design is also well done… not too close to a Spielbergest dinosaur, and a bit more imposing than the original Japanese Godzilla.
As far as action and beautiful effects this is as good as it gets. Unfortunately Emmerich and his friend producer don’t seem to know shit about being funny. Some people are not they don’t need to bother… they made a good choice in bringing Godzilla back to the big screen. What they need is the immediate attention of a real writer by now. You’d think they would have realized that a long time ago. I mean fuck it they are responsible for Universal Soldiers… and the ridiculous patriotic joke named Independence Day… That’s OK, I believe they’re gonna have two other shots at it. So maybe next time they’ll realize that they should stay away from the dialogue part of filmmaking. Maybe they should do a mute action drama… it’ll fit their style perfectly. Go see Godzilla people… Godzilla rules! He’s a monument in cinema history just like King Kong. Too bad he played in that R. Emmerich movie…
© 1998 Tom H
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