Commercial success of modern Hollywood films has more to do with hype than quality of the film itself. And when it comes to hype, the quality of hype is more important than its quantity. This is the lesson painfully learned by the makers of Godzilla, the 1998 disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich. Designed as the big summer film of 1998, it was relentlessly advertised as the biggest event in the history of cinema almost a year before its premiere. This hype was combined with arrogance, best seen in the slogan that was bound to offend certain powerful people in Hollywood and a huge segment of the science fiction geek population. As a result, long before the premiere, it became one of the most loathed films in recent memory. Critics who had panned the film soon learned that the general public followed their advice, turning Godzilla into one of the biggest commercial disappointments of the 1990s.
Godzilla is a remake of Gojira, the Japanese 1954 film that spawned not only numerous sequels but also its very own sub-genre of "monster films". The original Gojira (or Godzilla as it was renamed for the US market) was inspired by the real-life incident of a Japanese fishing boat being affected by American nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific. Four decades later, the only country that had conducted such tests in the Pacific was France, and the plot of the new version went from there. The film begins with a nuclear explosion in French Polynesia that irradiates a couple of marine iguanas. Their offspring is going to mutate in a rather spectacular fashion and announce its presence to the world with a couple of boats being sunk in the Pacific and huge footprints in Panama. When it turns out that the creature's final destination is the city of New York, both the incompetent civilian administration of Mayor Roger Ebert (played by Michael Lerner) and the military forces under Colonel Hicks (played by Kevin Dunn) seem unable to cope with the crisis. Biologist Dr. Nik Tatopulous (played by Matthew Broderick) is called to offer advice, and he, to his utmost horror, finds that the monster wants to hatch hundreds of eggs in the middle of Manhattan. Unfortunately, his warnings are not taken seriously by anyone except French secret agent Philippe Roache (played by Jean Reno). Tatopoluos joins the French covert team in their mission to destroy some two hundred baby monsters in Madison Square Garden. There they have to deal not only with carnivorous lizards but also with Tatopoulos' former girlfriend and ambitious TV reporter Audrey Timmons (played by Maria Pitillo) and her brave cameraman Victor "Animal" Palotti (played by Hank Azaria).
The best thing in Godzilla - the special effects - is in some way the film's undoing. Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, the film's scriptwriters and producers, invested most of their energy and attention towards a single task - to make a screen monster that would be more realistic and awe-inspiring not only compared to its Japanese predecessors but also to Spielberg's dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. In only a couple of years, CGI technology has progressed, and Godzilla (both in its gigantic and miniature "baby" version) indeed looks formidable on screen. Scenes in which Godzilla wreaks havoc on the streets of New York are truly impressive. Unfortunately, the realism of Godzilla's physical presence only points towards the utter emptiness of the plot, human characters, and complete lack of scientific credibility or common sense. The lack of sympathetic human characters is underlined with bad and uninspired acting, even from those actors who (unlike Maria Pitillo, who had her career more or less torpedoed with Godzilla) were supposed to deliver at least passable performances. Devlin and Emmerich's attempt to inject some comic relief with characters with the same names and resemblance to film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel is a failure, because the joke wears off very quickly. The task of comic relief is actually performed by Jean Reno, who seems very relaxed with his role and combines humour with charisma. When the action focuses on Reno's character in the latter part of the film, Godzilla starts to look interesting. Unfortunately, that happens too late to generally improve the impression of this film. On the other hand, some more recent political developments have given Godzilla new ways to entertain the audience.
Godzilla, just like it didn't live up to its hype, doesn't live up to its infamy, but most viewers won't have many reasons for regret if they decide to spend more two hours of their lives on something else.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on March 2nd 2004)
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