GODZILLA (1998)
A Film Review
Copyright Dragan Antulov 2004
Commercial success of modern Hollywood movie has more to do
with hype than quality of the film itself. And when it comes to hype,
quality of hype is more important than its quantity. This is the lesson
painfully learned by makers of GODZILLA, 1998 disaster movie
directed by Roland Emmerich. Designed as the big summer movie of
1998 it was relentlessly advertised as the biggest event in history of
cinema almost year before its premiere. This hype was combined
with arrogance, best seen in the slogan that was bound to offend
certain powerful people in Hollywood and huge segment of science
fiction geek population. As a result, long time before premiere it
became one of the most loathed films in recent memory. Critics who
had hacked the film to pieces soon learned that the general public
followed their advice, turning GODZILLA into one of the biggest
commercial disappointments of 1990s.
GODZILLA is a remake of GOJIRA, Japanese 1954 movie that
spawned not only numerous sequels but also its very own sub-genre
of "monster movies". Original GOJIRA (or GODZILLA as it was
renamed for US market) was inspired by real life incident of Japanese
fishing boat being affected by American nuclear bomb testing in
Pacific. Four decades later the only country that conducted such tests
in Pacific was France and the plot of the new version went from
there. The film begins with nuclear explosion in French Polynesia
that irradiates couple of marine iguanas resulting. Their offspring is
going to mutate in rather spectacular fashion and announce its
presence to the world with couple of boats being sunk in Pacific and
huge footprints in Panama. When it turns out that the creature's final
destination is city of New York, both civilian administration of
incompetent mayor Roger Ebert (played by Michael Lerner) and
military forces under Colonel Hicks (played by Kevin Dunn) seem
unable to cope with the crisis. Biologist Dr. Nik Tatopulous (played
by Matthew Broderick) is called to offer advice and he, to his utmost
horror, finds that the monster wants to hatch hundreds of eggs in the
middle of Manhattan. Unfortunately, his warnings are not taken
seriously by anyone except French secret agent Philippe Roache
(played by Jean Reno). Tatopoluos joins French covert team in their
mission to destroy some two hundreds of baby monsters in Madison
Square Garden. There they have to deal not only with carnivorous
lizards but also with Tatopoulous' former girlfriend and ambitious
TV reporter Audrey Timmons (played by Maria Pitillo) and her brave
cameraman Victor "Animal" Palotti (played by Hank Azaria).
The best thing in GODZILLA - the special effects - is in some way
the film's undoing. Roland Emmerich and Dean Devilin, film's
scriptwriters and producers, invested most of their energy and
attention towards a single task - make a screen monster that would
be more realistic and awe-inspiring not only compared to its Japanese
predecessors but also to Spielberg's dinosaurs of JURASSIC PARK. In
only a couple of years CGI technology has progressed and Godzilla
(both in its gigantic and miniature "baby" version) indeed looks
formidable on screen. Scenes in which Godzilla wreaks havoc on
streets of New York are truly impressive. Unfortunately, the realism
of Godzilla's physical presence only points towards the utter
emptiness of plot, human characters and complete lack of scientific
credibility or common sense. Lack of sympathetic human characters
is underlined with bad and inspired acting, even from those actors
who (unlike Maria Pitillo, who had her career more or less torpedoed
with GODZILLA) were supposed to deliver at least passable
performances. Devlin and Emmerich's attempt to inject some comic
relief with characters with the same names and noticing resemblance
to film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel is a failure, because the
joke wears off very quickly. The task of comic relief is actually
performed by Jean Reno, who seems very relaxed with his role and
combines humour with charisma. When the action focuses on Reno's
character in the latter part of the film, GODZILLA starts to look
interesting. Unfortunately, that happens too late to generally improve
impression of this film. On the other hand, some more recent political
developments gave GODZILLA new ways to entertain audience.
GODZILLA, just like it didn't live to its hype, doesn't live up to its
infamy, but most viewers won't have many reasons for regret if they
decide to spend more two hours of their lives on something else.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
Review written on March 2nd 2004
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax
http://film.purger.com
- Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in
Croatian
http://www.ofcs.org
- Online Films Critics Society
==========
X-RAMR-ID: 37165
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1256032
X-RT-TitleID: 1083246
X-RT-AuthorID: 1307
X-RT-RatingText: 3/10
|
