If you actively watch movies you often bring, without even meaning to, a lot of baggage along with you. Preconceived notions about what you expect the movie to be, opinions about the actors, director, and other people involved based on previous, unrelated movies and more all influence how you look at a film. It's this sense of passing judgment even before I saw the film that I have to deal with in my review of Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack.

[Note: While Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack -which is also known as Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: The Giant Monsters' General Offensive- is a funny, unwieldy title for the sake of brevity I will be referring to the movie simply as GMK.]

The problem I had to try and overcome while watching GMK is the mixed feelings I have about the director Shusuke Kaneko. There are some giant monster fans who feel that his re-launch of the Gamera series is superior in every way to the Heisei run of Godzilla films. My feelings about the first two Gamera films, however, was that there were some good points to them, some points that didn't work properly while I felt Gamera 3 was repellent, utterly full of itself, and wildly over-rated. [Check out this guest review for a breakdown of the problems the new Gamera films are saddled with.] In spite of my reservations about the Gamera I was willing to concede that Kaneko has some interesting ideas and was interested in seeing what he might do with Godzilla in GMK.

GMK is the story of Yuri Tachibana [Chiharu Niyama] a reporter on a schlocky science fiction themed reality show who decides to follow Godzilla and other critters around Japan. That sounds like a shallow reading but that's the only plot thread in the movie that actually goes anywhere. General Taizo Tachibana [Ryudo Uzaki] -who shares a dinky apartment with his daughter- seems to be in the movie for no other reason than to test improbable drilling equipment and to dream up some ludicrous plan to defeat Godzilla. There's also some nonsense about rocks recording information but, most distressingly, the back-story for Godzilla and the other monsters is underdeveloped.

Godzilla himself is impressive enough physically. Bow-legged, a bit on the lumpy side, shaded to look like an old tire with empty white eyes he's the essence of ambulatory anger. Trying to figure out what exactly he's pissed about, however, is another matter. Some vaguely explained old man [Eisei Amamoto] claims that Godzilla is the collection of souls all those who died in the Pacific during World War 2. Why do all these souls collect into a nuclear powered lizard? Why does this collection of fifty year old angst decide that it wants to go wrestle other big monsters? The concept of what Godzilla is supposed to represent is never developed or doesn't even manage to impact the story one way or another. For as much as this latest revision to Godzilla's origin is used they might as well have claimed that Godzilla snuck off Monster Island to go cause some super-sized mischief.

The monsters Godzilla runs into fare even more poorly. There's some jazz about them being the guardian monster gods that guard Japan -a statement that everyone immediately accepts at face value- but why they didn't bother to stop Godzilla fifty years before is never explained. The mystery prophet guy predicts their return but the idea of prophecies that predict that ancient monsters will return to protect the modern world may actually have been better explored in the original Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla. The fact that prophet guy actually goes out and jump starts Ghidorah doesn't help his case much; it's not much of a prediction if you go out and fulfill it yourself. The other two monsters were more self-starters but didn't exactly wake up on the right side of the bed. Mothra makes her appearance by slaughtering a group of people who are inexplicably trying to drown a dog while Baragon kills a pack of motorcycle driving teenagers for doing little more than knocking over a small statue presumably dedicated to him. These are zero tolerance monsters.

Having the monsters toss their weight around with the locals would be okay if they were awe inspiring behemoths or were at least cool. Problem is, these monsters suck. In order to make Godzilla seem even more powerful and malevolent the guardian monsters are shown to be smaller than Godzilla. The most drastic change for this decision is that the usually towering Ghidorah now barely has his heads up to the level of Godzilla's shoulders. At no point did I think that Godzilla was in any danger of losing to his opponents. Instead of seeing whatever Godzilla is currently supposed to represent crushing any opposition it was more a matter of seeing how long it would take him to whomp on a happy dog-like monster [complete with expressive ears] a moth and what now looks for all the world like a three headed chicken. Special note should be given to Ghidorah for getting his ass kicked three times in a row in very short order. It's not everyday you'll find a character who will lose, lose, and then lose some more.

While the monsters weren't physically impressive Yuri more than made up for it. Not only did she film and report stories about Godzilla all night but she kept up with him on a bicycle. That woman is in shape! I was also impressed that in spite of having the whole country getting stomped flat regular television programming wasn't interrupted, allowing Yuri to do live broadcasts. I wonder if other stations in Japan were covering Godzilla or were just running re-runs of Ally McBeal or something similar.

A minor point, but what was up with the sound-track that sounded like it was cribbed from a John Carpenter movie? I don't think the sound-tracks need to be totally slaved to what Ifukube did but the half-crazed electric noise in GMK wasn't particularly inspiring. Nit-picking about the sound-track is one thing, but the most vexing thing about the movie for me was that it wasn't about anything. Was it about not forgetting the past, both the bad [Godzilla] and sort of good [guardian monsters] lest it come back as a giant monster? Since Admiral Tachibana actually gets off the winning shot on Godzilla is this the only Godzilla movie out there that is actually pro-military? There's a gloomy thought. Most Godzilla movies take off in zany directions with their themes but GMK drops ideas as soon as they are introduced.

I know it sounds like I'm being overly harsh on GMK but, again, there was so much build up for this movie with people claiming it was the greatest thing since the original Godzilla and my own preconceived notions it wasn't surprising that this movie had a lot to live up to. In the end it's not a bad movie and there's plenty to recommend in it -the girl playing Yuri is easy on the eyes, Kaneko knows how to block and frame a shot and tiny, intricate models get demolished in style. GMK is nice and all but in the end it's not the final word in Godzilla movies.

Questions, comments, and an explanation as to how the actors kept a straight face when they discussed how rocks were the "CD's of history" can be sent to gleep9@hotmail.com. If you're done here lumber on back to either the G Review or G Main page.