Godzilla (B-)

"When we land, I'm going to throw up."

I took my son to see the latest edition of Godzilla today. While he earnestly proclaimed it was a solid four stars, I was somewhat less impressed. You may ask me "Why?" dear reader, and I will answer you thus: "For a movie titled Godzilla, the titular character doesn't have a hell of a lot of screen time."

The acting was solid, the special effects were great, and the scenes involving Godzilla were spellbinding. Unfortunately, you don't really get a glimpse of him until the movie's already been going for a good long while. The slow start involves introducing the main characters and allowing for a little historical perspective, which is great. I was still disappointed with the film's distinct lack of giant lizards.

That said, the movie does show off the enemy monsters quite a bit, and they're pretty neat. On the occasion that they get down and dirty with Godzilla, it's pretty impressive. As with earlier incarnations of Godzilla and his kaiju cousins, mankind's armed forces don't do much more than annoy them. Why would anyone bother spraying a huge monster with small arms fire? I have no clue. Seems like a good way to get squashed to me.

Given that the movie is so new, I'll spare you any huge spoilers. Suffice it to say that it begins with something crawling out of a hole in the ground, which then leads to the destruction of a Japanese nuclear power plant. The power plant's destruction results in the death of Joe Brody's (played by Bryan Cranston) wife, which leads him to a fifteen year search for the real cause of the accident. In the midst of all this turmoil is Joe's son, Ford (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who is an ordnance disposal specialist in the US Army.

Rather than destroying Tokyo, the film's creatures head east towards the United States. I guess Asia experienced enough abuse in Pacific Rim, and they wanted to spread the love around a little more. Lots of buildings get demolished, and a lot of people get stepped on, and this ultimately leads to an impressive showdown between Godzilla (who is much more of a clumsy protagonist than a villain) and the enemy critters (who just want to settle down on the West Coast and have a few thousand babies).

"Where's the big lizard? There's supposed to be a big lizard!"

Though it was a monster movie, it wasn't really a horror film. There were some quick scares here and there, but they were generally the cheap kind (in other words, there's a loud sound and something mildly shocking happens on screen). Even my son wasn't particularly frightened, which is saying a lot. It doesn't take much for him to hide his face. The monster effects were good, but there's absolutely no gore to speak of, either.

It did kick the pants off the Devlin/Emmerich version of Godzilla from 1998 (which--let's face it--was complete and utter garbage; I still regret paying full price to see it in the local movie theater). It doesn't provide quite the nostalgia for the original Tojo films, but there's not much that can do that. Overall, it's worth seeing, especially if you liked Pacific Rim, but understand that you'll be waiting a while for the Big G to show up.