Review of Godzilla (1998) by Filipeneto — 01 Mar 2020

Roland Emmerich must be the director most feared by New Yorkers, as their city is almost always devastated in his films. This happened in "The Day After Tomorrow", "Independence Day" and "2012", as it happens throughout this film, which is basically about the attack that a gigantic marine lizard decides to do against New York.

The plot is all a little too imaginative and there are a lot of things that don't make sense. For example, it is unlikely that radiation from atomic tests would have caused a normal lizard to grow to the size of a skyscraper, and even more difficult to parallel this with an abnormal growth of a few inches in the Chernobyl earthworms (unless some of them have become the creatures we see in "Tremors", another film about grown monsters). The arrival in New York brings more stupid things: the monster shrinks and increases to the taste and needs of the film, the military are totally made of fools and humiliated at all times and who saves the day is a nerdy scientist with an unpronounceable name and a French military spy who likes to make stupid jokes at the most inappropriate times. The end is just as bad and strange, and the creature's very appearance is quite strange, looking like a weird dinosaur.

The cast is full of well-known names, like Matthew Broderick (very competent in comedy, but totally wasted and strange here) Maria Pitillo makes a walking caricature, and the whole cast seems little interested in doing something good. French actor Jean Reno, in the most forgettable non-French speaking role in his filmography, gives us the best interpretation, which is to say a lot about the film.

The film still has a serious problem with rhythm, with huge sections where nothing happens and that just take up space and make the film longer than necessary. To add to that, the bad visual, special and sound effects and liters of bad CGI, fake at first glance, boring and without anything impressive. The soundtrack is great, but it is meaningless in such a hollow film and ends up sounding too presumptuous.

This is definitely a monstrous monster movie.