Godzilla discovers how hard it is to find a cab in New York City.
By Jason Rothman
They've done it again. The filmmaking team that ruined Stargate and Independence Day have taken another surefire popcorn-movie idea and taken all the heart and fun out of it.
Godzilla as revived by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin is a far high-pitched cry from the creature of old. The new design is more biologically believable: he looks as if a T-Rex and the creature from "Alien" had a kid. Instead of the towering, wide-bodied city smasher of the old Japanese movies, this model is sleeker and with worse posture. He may be "taller than this building" like the ads say, but he never seems to stand straight-up to prove it. Simply put -- he's less scary.
Godzilla discovers how hard it is to find a cab in New York City.
The movie he inhabits gets off to a quick enough start. Emmerich doesn't waste much time getting the monster to New York -- things move along at a rapid pace for the first 20 minutes or so -- thanks to the complete absence of character development. But the pacing is odd (just like that, all of Manhattan is evacuated) and the movie never engages you.
The plot, as it is, revolves around Matthew Broderick (looking totally out of place) as a scientist who, lucky for us, specializes in biological mutations caused by radiation. (Why is it that movies like this always give us a main character to identify with who's an expert on the creature? It would be a lot scarier if the main character knew nothing because fear is motived by uncertainty and lack of knowledge.) Broderick is called upon by the military to help track a really big reptile who's radioactive and moving across the South Pacific (how he eventually gets to New York without going through the rest of North American first is never explained). Meanwhile, his ex-girlfriend is stuck in a job as a production assistant for a New York TV station (WIDF -- ID4, get it?), her dreams of being a reporter stifled by a sleazy anchorman (we're supposed to believe TV execs would choose not to put this beautiful young woman on the air in favor of a wrinkled old anchor played by The Simpsons' Harry Shearer in full "Kent Brockman" mode). She uses the Godzilla invasion to try and jumpstart her career, with help from a friend and cameraman who we're supposed to believe is named "Animal" (played by The Simpsons' Hank Azaria in full Moe the bartender mode). Thrown together by a crisis, will Broderick and his ex-flame reunite? Duh.
These folks do a lot of running around and the big lizard makes a big mess of Manhattan. But it's an empty post-evacuation Manhattan. He's pursued by swarms of Blackhawk helicopters, and the hide and seek nature of the chase is cool, but we're never made to feel the stakes are high. It doesn't help that Godzilla is made to seem very sympathetic -- he's the best developed character. This isn't the big, bad fire breathing monster who shoots laser beams out of his eyes and goes Medieval on Manhattan. No, that would've been cool. Instead, this Godzilla is more like a freaked-out, oversize Iguana.
The film's third act is dominated by a lengthy sequence in Madison Square Garden that's highly reminiscent of the raptors in Jurassic Park and parts of Gremlins -- it all has a been-there-done-that feel. And, I won't give too much away, but when it comes to the main threat in the film, it turns out that despite what the ads have been saying all along, it's not SIZE that matters, but rather, QUANTITY.
There are weak attempts at humor in the film, but each one is so obvious, any laughs are completely squashed. (There's a heavy-set politician who argues with a thin, bald colleague and gives the thumbs-up sign -- this might be funny if they didn't come right out and name the character "Mayor Ebert".) The packed-house I saw the movie with was mostly silent the entire time.
The cast is ok, but it's missing the Will Smith-type performer who can help hide the fact that the script is so stiff and shallow. Broderick is just here to pick-up a paycheck, presumably so he can go back and spend more time on less-lucrative Broadway work. He seems stuck in that same deer-in-the-headlights mode he was in for most of The Cable Guy.
As for the special effects, of course they're spectacular. But Emmerich doesn’t use them to inspire any awe. Never as a 200 foot lizard stomping through a city looked so unexciting. In an effort to make a Godzilla film that wasn't "cheesy," the filmmakers ended up making a Godzilla film that wasn't interesting at all.
Copyright 1998