There was great build-up between my friend and me to the new film about the great lizard (100 meters tall, according to my movie companion, whom I teased for using the metric system). Said companion sat next to me for our last giant-monster movie, as I giggled and rolled my eyes at the silliness. So he was a bit surprised when I proclaimed after seeing Godzilla that I’d enjoyed the movie. But I did.
This isn’t the badly-dubbed Godzilla of our youth. The monsters are better; the story is better; the acting is better. Don’t get me wrong: it’s still pretty silly. And one must still suspend any deep reflection on things related to physics. (There’s just something about how the giants can take just a piece of a steel structure, as if the buildings are made of dried sugar, breaking off only where touched but otherwise left intact. (I know, I know—it looks a lot better in a cinematography (and CAG) way to have pieces of sky-scrapers missing rather than piles upon piles of rubble, under which one’s subconscious would have to realize were buried thousands upon thousands of humans.)) But that aside (after all, this is science fiction), I wasn’t rolling my eyes as much as one might have predicted. wink emoticon
Godzilla entertained just fine. It isn’t deep. The acting is not going to win awards. But it at least tries to have a story. The necessary players are present for an early summer big film: love interest, despondent child, parental-figure with rage when offspring are put in jeopardy. It follows the predictable path of disaster plots. And it leaves enough open in the end for what could be next. So no, it doesn’t take much thought or attention, and it won’t weigh deeply on many minds once seen. (It’s taken me two weeks to finally write about it, not because I was digesting difficult or deep emotions, but because it did not resonate in any lasting way once the entertainment and post-viewing chat were buffered with a night’s sleep.)
In its entertainment, Godzilla also managed to court its greying audience members with ties to its predecessors. As a nod to our black-and-white favorite monster (hmmm—Godzilla or King Kong. I think I have to go for the latter due to the love story with Jessica Lange, but that wasn’t black and white, was it? Okay, GZ can remain as the uncolorized fave), the writers of this new Godzilla fabulously weaved the stories to bring it modern. And apparently, deeper references were embedded that only the true GZ connoisseur will catch (which flew directly over my head but my friend caught, of course wink emoticon ).
In the end, it was a fun couple of hours. Sure, it’s not my typical movie genre, but sometimes, even I enjoy silliness in giant monsters.