Review: Godzilla (1998)

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Godzilla

Rating

Director

Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria, Kevin Dunn, Michael Lerner, Harry Shearer, Arabella Field, Vicki Lewis, Doug Savant, Malcolm Danare

Screenplay

Roland Emmerich

Length

2h 19m

Starring

Roland Emmerich

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Buy/Rent Movie

Soundtrack

Poster

Source Material

Basic Plot

Godzilla comes to Manhattan and he’s pregnant.

Review

It’s big, it’s scaly and it’s not happy to be here. “Godzilla” stomped into local theaters this week to wreak havoc in Manhattan and at the box office.

Nuclear testing on distant islands of French Polynesia has resulted in mutation of a lizard in that area. This much we gather from the long opening credits sequence depicting the nuclear blast and viewing the defenseless lizards watching as their home and their lives are destroyed by the fiercest of foes: man.

Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) is a biologist studying nuclear mutation of various creatures. His latest effort focuses on earthworms at Chernobyl. He’s torn away from his work by American military operatives lead by Colonel Hicks (Kevin Dunn). Tatopoulos is wanted to discover what this creature is that has shredded a fishing trawler and made tracks across in Panama.

Many of us have come to know Godzilla as a cheesy Japanese movie monster that wreaks havoc in Japan. However, this incarnation of “Gojira” is less cheesy and more explosive. For the film to be successful, the blow-em-up premises of Independence Day and Men in Black have to be shoved below the surface and the true cheekiness of Godzilla exposed.

Ideally, Godzilla is a mix between “Jurassic Park” and “Independence Day.” But it doesn’t have the awesome power of “Park” or the sometimes-interesting humor from “ID4”

Unfortunately, director Roland Emmerich feels he’s got a sure-fire hit with the destruction from “ID4” and the theft of ideas from “Park”. On the box office front his success is guaranteed. Godzilla will make a killing if those cheering little kids in the theater have anything to do with it.

The quality, however, is quite different. There’s not much in this film we haven’t seen before. The effects are a combination of “Park’s” magnificent dinosaurs and the disappointing antiquated destruction from the end of “ID4.”

Bad roles have been given to great actors (Matthew Broderick and Hank Azaria). They play their parts the best they can, but it’s Emmerich’s directing that kills their shots at decent roles.

The most interesting portions of the film come in three sets of segments. The first is the use of Michael Lerner and Lorry Goldman as Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel look-a-likes. Lerner is Mayor Ebert, Manhattan’s rotund leader. Lorry Goldman is Gene, Ebert’s assistant. They bicker throughout the film, but it’s the sequence where Ebert crows “Why do I even keep you around?” that marks one of the few bright spots in the film.

The use of French secret service agents to bad-mouth the Americans and save the day is unique and finally turns the tables on the endless parade of anti-French sentiment that runs rampant through American humor. At one point, Philippe (Jean Reno), the French agents’ leader, is sampling coffee and spits it up, “I thought this was French Roast?” One of his colleagues, holding up an American can of coffee with the words “French Roast” printed in large letters on it, replies, “It is.”

The final set is featured at the beginning and towards the end. The sequences portray the lizards and especially Godzilla as innocent creatures simply trying to live the only way they know how. They are more human in characteristic than any of the human characters in the film. In that way the film fails. The Characters become destructible things instead of keys to the film.

In the end it’s not the senseless destruction or the lives lost that we care about, it is this giant lizard who we can only see as an innocent bystander hunted by a fear-stricken race bent on destroying anything that threatens their way of life.

If only that had been the intended plot, this would have been a far more interesting and enjoyable movie.