We can count on a lot during the summer months (some that we love more than others): heat, ice cream, mosquitos, sprinklers – – – and blockbuster movies in the cold AC. It is the latter I enjoyed recently—that blockbuster style of movie with no hint of Oscars or awards but purely meant to entertain: Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
It wasn’t even a week ago that Facebook shared a memory of my movie review from early June 2014 of a movie of the same genre from that year: Godzilla. That, although not my first mega monster movie to write about on this blog, no doubt caught some folks off guard: Jana? A giant monster movie? Really? Well, really. I may never have gone full into the Marvel sequence (to the grand disappointment of more than a few), but a giant monster in this modern CGI times? Now that will make this lass smile. (Before you send me notes re the various Godzilla films from the past fifty or so years, I said these make me smile, not that I’m a full connoisseur (and that was to the great disappointment of that 2002 boyfriend and his son who couldn’t understand I did not know everything about the Japanese franchise).)
I do have to laugh, though, because as I sat down earlier this weekend to start to write about the current cinematic version of our large lizard friend, I turned on the television, and the 1933 King Kong was on Turner Classic Movies. It was then I realized that my affection for these movies is probably deeply rooted: I recall seeing Jessica Lange with the giant ape way back when with my father (goodness; I was but nine years old). There aren’t a lot of movies that make me reminisce about times with my father, but King Kong is one. Odd, perhaps. But who can fully explain how those wires get hard-circuited?
(Yes – giant monsters. It’s a thing for me. I wrote about the 2014 Godzilla actually after Pacific Rim. Alas, I’ve realized I was in my non-writing phase when I saw Kong: Skull Island. (Thus, although I saw that Kong (with the same movie companion as all the others), I failed to write about it.) With that, I’ve seen more giant monster movies than any of the Marvel or DC. So there ya go.)
But I digress. This newest release as movie number two in what’s promised as a Godzilla trilogy doesn’t disappoint for what it is, nor does it do any more than you would expect it to do. It’s hokey. It ignores principles of physics. It elicits, from me, groans and snickers (when the writers probably didn’t intend laughter). But it also entertains. It made me smile. It provided a two- (plus) hour reprieve from everything else going on. And it’s something fun I share with a dear friend. And for me, that’s all I expected.
Speaking of said friend, my movie companion, even though he knew I’d been asking about the release of the newest Godzilla for months, knew also of my affection for high blessings of tomatoes by critics. He warned me that the critics had panned the movie quite a bit, with a mere 40% rating under Rotten Tomatoes. But as I suspected, the fans rallied behind it, giving the flick a full 85% rating. And this was all fine by me. See, Godzilla is different. Godzilla is that summer ice cream: it doesn’t provide much sustenance, and you’re likely to forget it shortly thereafter, but it’s fun to enjoy every so often, especially with a friend. And it’s great fun and mindless indulgence in the moment. More importantly, it doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not.
Now – let’s get into some (non-spoiler) detail about my thoughts. As for that modern CGI – my, oh, my did I laugh at the 1933 version of Kong. He looked a lot more like the Abominable Snow Monster (from the beloved 1964 Christmas show, Rodolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)(and about as non-scary)) than a terrifying crazed ape. But our modern lizard, up close, has much more umph to his look. The same holds true for that three-headed King Ghidorah. This was all good. But that’s where the good of that part ends.
The movie makers get sloppy. Those far-away shots of Godzilla and the other monsters repeatedly played with scale and failed at it. The size differences of the monsters as compared to the humans and as compared to each other often shifted. This failure wasn’t necessary. And it was distracting. I mean, come on: I’m willing to suspend my reality of whether a giant lizard-esque nuclear-fed creature can live in the middle of the earth, but please don’t ask me to think he’s as large as a forty-story building in one moment then ask me to think he’s as large as only four Fenway Parks stacked atop of each other in the next. That just doesn’t jive.
Other points are as hard to accept regarding time, physics, and space, but even with that, I was willing to *momentarily* let go of those things. They still bug me (and I think the movie could be better if they were better addressed), but most of those things you can let go of and just enjoy the crafted drama playing out in front of you.
Other than that, and size-sloppiness aside, it was a fun movie, even in all it’s hokey-ness. Part of the story (and hokeyness) is that we have LOTS of monsters in this one. And they bring their own level of hokey. (Work of the day: hokey.) They also bring some fun layers to the film. That said, I don’t know what a giant moth looks like when she’s smitten, but I do think that if looks could speak, Mothra was saying, “Hey, Joe, you wanna give it a go?” when she looked at our dear lizard. (I warned you it was hokey.)
Finally, indeed, part of why I love these movies is being able to laugh at them. Be aware, though, that the best laugh of the movie comes in the closing credits. Seriously – you gotta pay attention to the point about Titan waste in those closing headlines for the best and most hearty belly laugh of the whole thing.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters — coming to a theater near you to make you laugh and groan and roll your eyes with the rest of us. Or at least with me. But I roll ’em with affection. 😉