Godzilla

First of all, I want to retract a statement I've been making for the last couple weeks. I said that Godzilla would not only beat Lost World's weekend take of $90 million, it would clear $125 million after the receipts came in from Memorial Day. I was regretting that before the movie even started, because, for the most hyped movie of the year, on the first possible chance to see it, the McClurg Court 7:00 show was not even sold out. And not even close to being sold out. The crowd waiting at 10:00 was even thinner. Bad sign. Lost World's opener last year was packed. Hell, the night Independence Day opened, they ran it nonstop for 72 hours, and even the 1:00am show was sold out that first night.

In other words, Sony has to be shaking in their boots. This movie will clear its budget, but it will still be deemed a disappointment because it's not going to clear $200 million, and for all the money they spent on that ubiquitous marketing campaign, they're not going to get out of it what they put into it. But that's not the marketing department's fault. They had no movie to begin with.

Anyway, the military summons Matthew Broderick's character (some impossibly Greek name I couldn't begin to spell, and it's also the last name of the Godzilla designer), who works for the Nuclear Regulatory Board, after a couple boats go down in the Pacific. He's used to dealing with worms, specifically worms near Chernobyl which have grown 17% larger due to the radiation. What they're about to show him, of course, is a little bigger than that. Other assorted token humans along for the ride include Maria Pitillo (TV's Partners) as his lost love/news anchor lackey, Hank Azaria as a renegade cameraman, Harry Shearer as the aforementioned news anchor, and Jean Reno (The Professional) as a shady insurance agent.

GODZILLA ® and the GODZILLA character and design are marks of TOHO Co., LTD.

Did you know how much it rains in New York? This entire movie seems to takeplace in a rainstorm. It didn't rain that much the entire six months I lived in New York. Some subtle symbolism for nuclear fallout, I guess. Just to nail it home, they probably should have printed the word "MESSAGE" across the screen, to to make sure everybody got it.

Gozilla's entrance to New York is shot for shot the same bit from the trailer they showed way back in November. Old man on a pier goes fishing, gets a bite, gets his rod yanked into the water, runs down the pier as this big wave heards toward him, with the pier planks flying in the air. They show a whole mess of scenes with assorted Godzilla body parts, especially that huge tail, but you don't get a full shot of him until about the sixty minute mark. And while it looked cool, it also looked a lot like a velociraptor. But I'll talk more about that in the Plot Revealer section, too.

The best sequence of the movie was the first military strike in New York. Lots of CIA helicopters (with total dumbasses flying them. When a giant lizard is chasing you, fly UP, you dolt), missile attacks, Godzilla's tail wasting afloor of windows but leaving the rest of the building intact. But it was way too short to make the movie worth checking out.

The acting? Surely you jest. No one will get an Oscar nomination under Roland Emmerich's direction (See Independence Day, Stargate), unless you are a visual effects supervisor or a sound editor.  Broderick hasn't been this mediocre in a long time. Azaria's Noo Yawk accent was constantly slipping, Shearer was wasted as a one dimensional news weasel, and Pitillo was just annoying. Thevery fact that they attempted a romantic subplot between Broderick and Pitillo was frustrating, because he had such bad dialogue and she just didn't seem worth it. Reno, however, found a way to rise above the material, but they also gave him the most to work with, which isn't to say a lot.

NOW IS WHERE I GIVE HUGE PIECES OF THE MOVIE AWAY. I WILL LEAVE SPACES ON BOTH SIDES OF THE PLOT REVEALER SECTION. SKIP AHEAD TO THE NEXT SET OF ALLCAPS IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW CRUCIAL BITS ABOUT THIS MOVIE!!!!!!

Okay, are we all here? Good.

Jesus, this movie drove me nuts. First of all, as you've seen from the TV ads, Godzilla is pregnant, and the whole reason he's going to New York is to nest.  Broderick tells the military this, but of course, they'd rather just kill Godzilla and hope he/she (another Jurassic plot device, asexual amphibians: Remember frog DNA?) didn't lay any eggs. But he did. In Madison Square Garden, no less. And about 200 of them. And when they hatch, they are about the samesize as a full grown velociraptor, and move the exact same way. So when Broderick and Co. are running like hell through a whole mess of baby Godzillas (or Godzukis, right, Mr. Porrell?), I felt like I was watching Lost World or Jurassic Park again. They even hunted in packs like the raptors did.

And for a fire breathing lizard, he could have wasted the military strike with no problem. But when Godzilla was nose to nose with a platoon of Army goons (led by Doug Savant, go figure), he looks at them for a second, then moves onto the massive pile of fish they have waiting for them in Central Park. One small fire puff, and they're all toast. but he doesn't do it. And they may have been able to get away with this once, but THEY DID IT AGAIN, at the veryend when our heroes get out of Madison Square Garden alive after it's bombedby the military. Godzilla stares at them, the ones he immediately holds responsible for killing his babies, and doesn't flambee them. Instead, they run away, and ACTUALLY GET AWAY. Ridiculous. Broderick even grabs a live wire and shocks Godzilla with it. As Tom Arnold said in True Lies, ballsy. Stupid, but ballsy.

Then comes the Crimson Tide sequence, where they have subs waiting in the Hudson river in case Godzilla doesn't take the Central Park bait (which he doesn't, because the military has itchy trigger fingers). First of all, I don't think the Hudson is that clear. Second, while the visual effects were fine, it's already  been done, so it carried no real sense of suspense. The last bit of thievery was probably their way of saluting the monster movies of the past: when Godzilla finally bites it and you hear his last heart beats as it moans on the ground, with Broderick/Jessica Lange (Thank you, Steve) looking on with sympathy, ala King Kong 1977. This part in particular wasdifficult for me, because I was rooting for Godzilla to begin with.

And I haven't even bugun to talk about the other idiot characters, like Mayor Ebert (who, yes, looks exactly like Roger Ebert), who wants to get the residents back into the city because (major plot twist coming) it's an election year. Harry Shearer's news weasel makes a pass at Maria Pitillo in front of everyone at work (uh, sure), and the dialogue between the military and the misunderstood scientist, the news weasel and his plucky assistant, and the mayor and his assistant, was cliche city. PLUS, during the whole Madison Square Garden chase scene, the product placements weren't even remotely subtle. Blockbuster, Josta, TNT, Hershey's Kisses, Konica cameras, they're all there. It was downright silly.

PLOT REVEALER SECTION OVER.

This movie makes Independence Day look inspired by comparison. Those stupid one liners that Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum had? Genius compared to this.   Nothing in this movie is even as clever as "Ship all banged up!", and you know that Will Smith improvised that one. Roland Emmerich will get kicked off the A-list for this one, even though he's signed to do 3 more Event movies for Sony. He better make sure and go into new territory next time, as this movie seemed all too familiar in too many ways. He does make great looking movies,but he needs a screenwriter, because, like James Cameron, he has no grasp of dialogue (though this movie makes Titanic look like Shakespeare).