Okay, here's the deal. For over a year now, I've had my dial set to 'ready', waiting for Brer Lizard to make his way into town. I have loved Godzilla since that first black and white movie, Godzilla, King of Monsters, came galloping through Tokyo. I remember Raymond Burr, of all people, being the only American reporter in Japan to witness the destruction. I remember that screeching howl 'Zilla threw out there to scare the bejesus out of any and all in his path. I remember people running from his mighty feet, screaming words that didn't match the way their mouth moved. It was all so charming in its simplicity.
I own every Godzilla movie on video. I watch them religiously, marathoning them over the weekend between Christmas and New Year's Eve. (I don't know how this tradition started, but it has a lot to do with hangovers and reruns.) My personal favorites are Godzilla Vs. Megalon and Son of Godzilla. Both are near 'bout comedy if you watch how danged serious everyone else was trying to act, only to be upstaged by a lug in a rubber suit.
Yep, the announcement was made. Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the duo that destroyed most of the world in ID4, had negotiated permission from Toho to make a Godzilla movie. There were the trailers, Brer Lizard stomping on a skeleton of a T-Rex, obviously a swipe at Jurassic Park. There were the billboards and stuff, saying "his foot is bigger than this bus," and "his tail is longer than The English Patient." I was eating this up like hot Krispy Kremes.
And, before you knew it, Memorial Day '98 was here. I was giggling like a newlywed on a vibrating hotel bed. I jumped up and got in line for the extra-special, night-before official screening, waited all day, even. The line was like a tailgate party, everybody talking and yelling and carrying on. This was it, baby!
And now that I've seen the new Godzilla, starring Matthew Broderick, I can relax in the knowledge that, once again, it has been proven that Japan can do it cheaper and better. The Lizard ain't the monster in this movie, folks. 'Twas not Beauty, but Money, that kills this Beast. That, and a slack-ass script. Thanks for nothing, Ro and Dean.
The plot, such as it is, is this: Godzilla heads to the Big Apple because it's time for him to lay eggs (?!?). Dr. Niko Tatopoulos (Broderick) is a biologist whose specialty is studying irradiated worms from Chernobyl, and apparently, this makes him a specialist in huge mutant lizards as well. His girlfriend, Audrey (Maria Pitillo), is a would-be reporter covering the story with her cameraman, Animal (Hank Azaria). Thankfully, there's a French operative in town, played by Jean Reno, who can help Tatopoulos fight Big Lizz. Whew!
I give up, folks. That stale thin mint is all there is for the plot. The rest of the time we're absolutely bombarded with a script full of jokes that wouldn't have made the cut on a bad Bob Hope Christmas special, spiced with top-of-the-line CGI effects for a monster. This script, by Devlin and Emmerich themselves, is atrocious. These two seem to think a great joke is to have the President of the United States named Ebert and a presidential aide named Gene (stop, my sides are splitting....) Then there's the running gag where nobody can pronounce the name "Tatopolous" (wild, wacky stuff....) Not a one of these snappy in-jokes works worth a flip. If anything, they hamstring an already crippled storyline.
Then we get a nice game of Movie Larceny going. The Centropolis boys swipe stuff out of every big sci-fi movie you can think of. The eggs look exactly like the eggs in Alien. The whole "angry monster momma" thing is lifted from Aliens, down to the movement of the monster's head. We get faux raptors that I know are gonna be a nice lawsuit, ripped off from Jurassic Park. I'll let you pick out which lines are stolen from Jaws and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Do I need to mention the resemblance of the New Wave 'Zilla to JP's T-Rex? Probably not.
And, while we're at it, let's talk about Brer Lizard's uncanny ability to grow and shrink depending on the needs of the script! He can walk through the Met Life building in Manhattan like a hot spoon through Cool Whip, yet he can be tripped up by a stupid chain link fence! He's taller than a skyscraper, but he gets all tangled up in a suspension bridge! I mean, what the hay-ull is going on here? "Damn the continuity, full speed ahead!"
Broderick could not be more lost in this thing if somebody had dumped him out of a car in the middle of the desert. I'm sure the boys were going for another Jeff Goldblum cute-smart-guy-kind of thing, but it ain't firing through this gun. Pitillo could just as easily be a department store mannequin with a microphone. The usually-decent Reno ought to have "Help me!" stamped on his forehead, he looks so out of place. He makes William Hurt look at home in Lost In Space. It's that bad, people. Only Azaria gets a chance to shine here, and, like he did in The Birdcage, he plays what cards he gets like a royal flush, wide open and ready to go.
If there is a redeeming feature to this bucket o'bullmuffins, it's the computer graphics, but even these get a mite tiresome after a while. It's almost laughable. We get the point early on that Brer Lizard can step on cars, his tail can bust the tar out of a building, and he can sprint through the "concrete jungle." Do we need to see the scenes over and over and over and over (get my point?) There is all this build up for some scene that would make the world go, "HOLY MOTHER! DID YOU SEE THAT???", but the scene never comes. It's like being teased by some lovely young lady for hours, but never getting to... well, uh, you see where I'm going with that thought.
It seems funny to say this at this point in time, but this version of Godzilla made me miss the old guy. I used to love it when Godzilla, as played by Random Japanese Guy #3, would get angry when another monster or the Army or whoever would challenge him. He would throw his arms around, stomp his feet, and generally throw a toddler tantrum. He'd nod his big ol' head when he won, and spin around and swat the opposition one last time with that tail before he headed back to Bikini Atoll. This version, though starts out pissed off and stays pissed off 'til the end. No personality, just attitude. Like Newt Gingrich with a tail.
If this is supposed to be the be-all, end-all of the summer, believe me when I tell you that the entire collective in Hollywood is breathing a sigh of relief, and probably laughing their collective butts off at Sony right now, because, if there's justice in the movie world, this thing will be on a direct flight to Cinemax Island by mid-August. Count on it being a $14.95 video purchase, too, because they're going to have to make money on this thing any way they can, because it certainly won't be an MIB or an ID4.
In the heat of the summer, this thing might just make enough money to be considered a hit, but if it does, it's only because it hypes itself into the stratosphere. All things considered, the best comparison I can make with this movie is Batman and Robin. Both were highly anticipated, both were talked up beyond belief, and both choked on their own egotistical directors, who honored flash over substance. (No, Schumacher, I haven't forgotten....)
Pass on the lizard, dear friends. Catch it on video or pay-per-view. Keep your cash for the other "event movies" that now stand a fighting chance at being seen, like Saving Private Ryan and Armageddon. And, go rent Godzilla Vs. Megalon one night, and just remember how charming a guy in a rubber suit can be.
Image copyright Sony Pictures.
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