# Godzilla (1998)

### reviewed by
Alex Siegel

    GODZILLA
    A film review by Alex Siegel
    Copyright 1998 Alex Siegel

Wrap a hundred million dollars worth of special effects around nickel script, and what you get is movie like Godzilla. It's hard to know what to say about a movie like this one since ordinary criticisms about plot and acting would be redundant. So instead I'll start with special effects, which are the primary reason anybody would want to see this picture.

The special effects were... pretty good, perhaps even great at times. If you saw ID4 and Jurassic Park, you won't see anything new in Godzilla. However, there is still a lot to look at. Big Green gets plenty of screen time, and he has never looked so spiffy. The systematic destruction of Manhattan was also well done. The visuals become a bit spotty towards the end, but none are in-your-face bad. If the director had cut out all the dialog and chosen a better score, we might have a pretty decent movie.

Unhappily, he did not make that choice. Where is it written that "summer popcorn" movies have to be so dumb that the audience laughs at all the wrong times? Aliens was not dumb. Terminator II was not dumb. The list goes on: Dirty Harry, Jaws, Commando... These are not shining examples of the literary arts, but they don't insult the audience either. Godzilla, on the other hand, is a perfect example of how Hollywood cuts all the wrong corners. I can imagine the scene now: a handful of Sony execs sitting around a table, sipping coffee. One suggests doing a big Godzilla movie. Everybody nods. "Great idea," one exec mutters, "but who will write the script?" Somebody else responds, "Don't worry about that. How hard can it be to churn out a Godzilla script?" Such statements should appear on tombstones as a warning to future generations.

I suppose I should talk about the acting, such as it is. Matthew Broderick struggles as the "smart guy that nobody will listen to." He spends most of the movie looking like a lost puppy rather than the brilliant (at times impossibly so) scientist that he's supposed to be. Maria Pitillo plays the romantic interest, but does so in such a dimwitted fashion that it's hard to see why anybody would want to spend much time with her. Jean Reno does a fair turn as a mysterious French guy, although he's limited by his material.

The production team did get one big thing right in Godzilla: the advertising campaign. It's easy to see where they spent $150 million on this budget item. We've been inundated with pretty good Godzilla ads for months now. More than anything else, these ads will probably save the movie from being a bomb at the box office. I particularly liked the preview where Godzilla steps on a Tyrannosaurus skeleton in a museum. I might add that a better movie would not have needed so much clever advertising. Witness The Full Monty, which had almost no promotion yet made truckloads of money.

In summary, go see Godzilla if you're in the mood for extremely brainless eye candy. Otherwise, don't bother.

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