Review of Godzilla (1998) by Shane H — 27 Nov 2013

I had never seen a film about Godzilla, yet I had heard much about him and played video games based on him so I figured it would be a good idea to witness him on the cinematic screen. Unfortunately at the time the only film I could get my hands on was the Golden Raspberry Award winning addition to the series directed by Roland Emmerich. Still, I was interested.

As it turns out, I was more interested in the idea of the Gozilla movie than the actual film itself, because the plot dynamics in Godzilla are ridiculous. Why is there romantic drama in a film about Godzilla? And why is a man that works for the nuclear regulatory commission interrupting his studies of a city destroying monster during its rampage to make tea for the woman that dumped him in high school? Godzilla will make you ask yourself that, but it never bothered to ask it itself.

There isn't enough Godzilla or enough disaster in the film to constitute it in being a disaster film, and the crappy script and subplots overshadow the importance of a giant monster destroying the city. Seriously Roland Emmerich, how did you mess that up? Well, there is a lot of ways with the casting being one of them.

Matthew Broderick is wrong for the lead. A disaster story like Godzilla requires a lead character that is serious and intelligent with a comedic character like his as a supporting figure, but clearly screenwriter and director Roland Emmerich disagreed. Matthew Broderick couldn't play the character right, and Roland Emmerich couldn't see that. When Vicki Lewis says to his character "You may be the wrong man for the job", its what we're all thinking for his role as the lead.

Maria Pitillo is stuck with the worst character and the poorest lines in the script, and so of course she has nothing to do with them and just ends up failing like they do. But her cheap line delivery, plastic crocodile tears and the fact that she fails to convince us that she is anything more than a teenage girl trying to prove herself ensures that she is Golden Raspberry Award material.

Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer prevent Godzilla from being taken seriously. Its not their fault, but considering they are both members of The Simpsons' voice cast and Harry Shearer constantly sounds like famous animated news reporter Kent Brockman, it just doesn't prove to have any benefit to Godzilla.

From a technical standpoint, Godzilla is mostly a success.

Godzilla makes use of a good production design and costumes, as well as some stable and strong cinematography with good editing and lighting, and the visual effects would have been powerful for the time of Godzilla's release in 1998.

But the flaw in Godzilla's technical side is the fact that Godzilla does not look like he is supposed to. Despite me not being the best person to be critiquing this as I have never seen any of the Godzilla movies, I know that he is not supposed to look like a mix of a spiky lizard and a velociraptor. He may have been a decent monster movie in a story about a mutated dinosaur, but this is a story about Godzilla. Its not a good one, and the design of Godzilla is essentially the nail on the coffin that ensures that.

Godzilla is an excessively boring and long disaster film that is poorly directed and only really has the mild benefit of a few explosions and good visual effects, even though it was wasted on a terrible design for the titular creature.