If something is successful there will, inevitably, be imitations of it. While this philosophy is understandable when it comes to attempts to clone the success of a block-buster movie, it's puzzling when you see this sort of logic applied to genre flicks or B movies. A good example of the latter is the idea that someone felt that reviving Yonggary -a Korean knock-off of Godzilla- in a film that draws it's inspiration from the American Godzilla debacle would be a good idea.

Yonggary -which is inexplicably retitled Reptilian for it's American release- is a Korean movie that stars American actors, is filmed in English, and features action that is entirely set in America. There's something depressing about that. Blurbs for the movie tout it as one of the most expensive movies filmed in South Korea, and with that budget they decided the best thing they could do was make a movie that apes the movies found in other countries and seems designed so it could be easily distributed to foreign markets. Is the national cinema scene in South Korea so poor that the biggest film produced there is ready made to become videotape fodder in English speaking countries? Then again, Reptilian was the only Korean movie available in the new release section of the video store where I rented the tape so the film producers may have been on to something, no matter how cynical it may appear.

Reptilian starts out at an excavation for dinosaur bones where the evil paleontologist Dr. Campbell [Richard B. Livingston] runs the dig with an iron fist. Diggers keep getting messily killed but he has covered up the deaths in order to keep his discovery of the bones of Yonggary -a whopping big dinosaur- secret. I always thought that paleontologists were odd academic types who lived from grant to grant and were squirreled away in the basements of museums when they weren't out carefully sifting through mounds of dirt. Campbell, however, is ambitious [although finding a new dinosaur species doesn't seem like it would make much of a celebrity out of a person] seems to spend more time hiding dead bodies -which he's surprisingly good at- than doing anything scientific, and throws money around like it's going out of style. Example: after a few workers give up the ghost and the remaining workers begin to get a bit concerned about staying on Campbell promises double the wages to everyone who stays on the dig. Where is he getting this money from? I doubt a university would give him so much leeway that he could go around randomly increasing salaries. Is he funding this excavation on his own? If so, his credit cards must be charged to the max; small wonder he seems so high strung.

Stumbling into the camp after the U.S. government claimed he died two years before is Dr. Hughes [Harrison Young] who brings grim predictions that there is a prophecy that states that Yonggary will return to life and destroy the world. Grizzled, pop-eyed, and stinking of gin [okay, I don't know if he actually stinks of gin but it seems a safe assumption] Hughes is an unlikely hero. Teaming up with Hughes is Holly Davis [Donna Philipson], Campbell's former assistant who joins Hughes after he convinces her of Yonggery's threat. That, or she got tired of spending her days doing nothing but hiding corpses.

Really, I don't know why I'm spending so much time discussing the characters in the film since they are the least important aspect of Reptilian. The acting ranges from almost adequate to poor and all the characters seem to be there simply to move the plot along. The only exception to this was the slovenly Dr. Hughes who, with his unkempt hair, wild eyes, and his grubby jacket pockets carelessly stuffed with information regarding an extra-terrestrial invasion, was either a gross carciture or a very accurate portrayal of a man dedicated to science. The America by way of Seoul isn't much worth discussing either. Except for the oddly decorated top secret military operation room -a little potted plant here, a charming lamp there- it's no more or less realistic than any other portrayal of America I've seen. The only reason people would watch this movie is to see the monster and what sort of opponents are tossed at it.

Yonggary himself looks more hefty than large, dodges incoming projectiles and enemies as well as a NFL running back, is a fair shot when it comes to projectile vomiting flaming globs of something or other at opponents, and is seriously lacking in the personality department. I'm not sure if this is due to either the use of CGI -as opposed to a guy in a suit- to create Yonggary or that Yonggary spent a majority of the movie being a puppet of alien invaders -not a lot of room for free will when you're brainwashed- but I'm not going to go back and look at the film to find out. Even the ending sequence of the movie, where Yonggary is hauled off like he's a stray dog, also does nothing to give Yonggary a feeling of primeval power and the strength of nature. The feral cats that live around my place evoke a greater sense of awe than Yonggary does.

Going up against Yonggary is the assorted military weapons, a monster that looks like either a tick or highly mutated pony, guys flying around with machine guns and jet packs [which was, to be honest, pretty cool] and an alien invasion force that seems to consist of two toys that try to pass themselves off as an evil, highly advanced, intergalactic threat. It would take a deft script to stick this much stuff into one movie, which exactly is what Yonggary is lacking. It's not so much a movie as a collection of action scenes thrown together.

So is Reptilian -or whatever it's called- worth seeing? Do you really need to see a movie that is such a knock-off of recent Godzilla films that at one point all the characters stand around cheering on the monsters while watching them on a giant television monitor? If you have seen every recent Godzilla flick out there already and still feel the need to watch a monster, any monster, rumble through a town Reptilian at least manages to be somewhat adequate in that area.

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