# Godzilla (1998)

### reviewed by
Kevin Patterson

    Film review by Kevin Patterson

GODZILLA Rating: ** (out of four) PG-13, 1998 Directed by Roland Emmerich. Screenplay by Emmerich and Dean Devlin. Starring Matthew Broderick, Maria Pitillo, Jean Reno, Hank Azaria.

GODZILLA, as I'm sure you already know, is a movie about destruction wrought by a giant lizard created through genetic mutations due to nuclear fallout in the South Pacific area. I'm no biologist, but I'm pretty sure this is pure nonsense. But that kind of thing isn't what makes or breaks a monster movie. I'm more than willing to turn my brain off and watch a giant lizard destroy New York City and lay its soon-to-hatch eggs all over the place as long as the script and logic manage not to actively annoy me. Well, bad news: GODZILLA annoyed me often, and in many ways.

First off, there's the World's Most Incompetent Military Strike Force. These guys plow into New York City with lots of high-tech weapons to fire at the lizard...and they MISS! Not once, not twice, they miss OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. They fire missiles into the side of the Chrysler Building, as well as several other skyscrapers, but they can't hit Godzilla. As the city's Mayor Ebert (played by Michael Lerner in an obvious parody of film critic Roger Ebert--he has an assistant named "Gene") points out, the military causes even more destruction than Godzilla does. Why did director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin, who co-wrote the screenplay, make these guys into such idiots? Did they need a catalyst for another ten minutes of destruction? (Hey guys, here's an idea: there's a GIANT LIZARD on the loose.) Was it supposed to drum up sympathy for the monster ? (Not a bad idea, but if that was their goal, the follow-up was hardly adequate.) In any case, the result is puzzling at best.

The characters in this film are at best one-dimensional and at worst boring and irritating. Matthew Broderick does okay as an expert biologist, as does Jean Reno as a French secret service agent (who is involved in this because--don't laugh--the French government supposedly feels guilty about its nuclear tests in the South Pacific). Hank Azaria is, I guess, intended as comic relief as a TV cameraman nicknamed "Animal," but his humorous moments are ill-conceived. I realize that disaster movies have to tone down the pure panic that would likely occur in a real giant lizard attack, but honestly, do you know anyone who would wag his finger at a rampaging 400-foot-tall lizard and declare, "Now I'm really pissed!"? Maria Pitillo, playing a reporter wannabe who was once engaged to Broderick's character, is stuck with the role of a complete ditz. She's not ditzy in an endearing way, nor would she even work as an object of mockery. She's just grating to the point that you want her off the screen as soon as she opens her mouth.

This movie is full of misfired attempts at humor. There are times when the script seems to be in some sort of contest with last year's BATMAN AND ROBIN for bad one-liners ("This lizard reproduces asexually." "Where's the fun in that?"). The Siskel and Ebert parodies were mildly amusing at first, but obvious takes on real people are a risky form of comedy that belong to the realm of spoof or of cameo appearances, and these two wear out their welcome by a long shot. Then there's a scene of a taxicab inside Godzilla's mouth, which miraculously results in no one biting the dust but does give Azaria cause to scream "You're going the wrong way!" at the frantic driver. Add this to some pure silliness like Broderick managing to trip up some of Godzilla's babies by throwing ball candy on the floor in their path, and I was occasionally left wondering if I was watching a Zucker brothers parody of Godzilla movies.

GODZILLA isn't even a great example of a simple action movie. The conflicts between these characters are for the most part shallow and uninteresting, and this is one case in which the filmmakers would have done better to just accept their one-dimensionality and get on with the explosions, monsters, and general chaos. Instead, we're treated to long, boring scenes in which they exchange cliched dialogue. Up until the second half of the movie, the destruction and mayhem is surprisingly lifeless, running the gamut from repetitive, mediocre imitations of INDEPENDENCE DAY, the Devlin/Emmerich team's previous film, to downright laughable when the military manages to hit everything in the city with the exception of the 400-foot-tall giant lizard. Finally, as if to suck even more dramatic tension out of the action scenes, Devlin and Emmerich telegraph most of them a mile away. "Did you hear that?" one character whispers to another as they track Godzilla's babies through underground tunnels. "What?" the other responds. Gee, you think something's about to jump out at them?

After all this ranting, you may wonder why I gave GODZILLA any stars at all. First of all, the action is fairly well executed towards the end of the movie as the four principal characters are trapped inside Madison Square Garden with hostile Godzilla babies. Yes, it's a JURASSIC PARK ripoff, and yes, it's interrupted with dumb jokes like Broderick opening an elevator door to find the monsters right outside and announcing, "Sorry, wrong floor," but it still managed to keep me entertained even though I knew Steven Spielberg had done it better. The final romp through the city with the big guy himself is also quite good, ending with an exciting chase on the Brooklyn Bridge. The movie also gains points for portraying Godzilla not as an evil monster bent on destruction but as nothing more than an animal trying to find a habitat. In this scenario, the humans are not morally upstanding beings defending their rights, but simply a competing species. This is slightly more thoughtful than simple "Aaaaahhh, it's a big scary monster, kill it!" logic, but none of the characters seem to think or talk about it very much, and the filmmakers do little with this aspect of the story other than to portray the attempts to down Godzilla with a certain amount of regret.

For about half of its excessive two-hour-plus runnning time, GODZILLA provided some good edge-of-the-seat thrills, so I suppose it's a partial success as a monster movie. Still, it's saying something about a film that its best moments are when the filmmakers start unashamedly ripping off other movies and reduce their characters to stick figures who exist only to run around. If Godzilla comes back for a sequel, as the ending indicates he probably will, I have a few suggestions: scrap these characters, quit trying to be so cute, and find some more original ways to create mayhem.

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