Godzilla

Godzilla (1998)

[Fuck No]
Trash-o-rama

Wow. I saw this movie once when I was a kid (must not have been too long after it came out) and vaguely remembered it sucking. I guess I forgot how very powerfully it did suck.

In it, French nuclear testing causes an iguana to mutate and grow to massive proportions. A biologist specializing in radioactive worms (horribly miscast Matthew Broderick) has to join the team which sets out to stop the monster after it migrates from Tahiti to New York. There, he meets up with his estranged girlfriend (Maria Pittilo) and a mysterious french guy (Jean Reno). Or something. Fuck, the movie makes no sense.

I mean, there are several huge logic problems with the movie, the first being why in the name of fuck did the giant lizard go to New York. Honest to fucking Christ. At one point, Broderick explains, "Oh! It all makes sense! Many animals migrate during the nesting season" or whatever... so, you know, all those iguanas in New York? That's why they're there.

God, there isn't really that much to say about this movie - its shittiness is well known and nothing I say is particularly original but... God it was bad.

The dialogue was unbelievably bad and the acting wasn't that much better. It didn't help that pretty much everybody in the movie was miscast. As much as I like Matthew Broderick, I really didn't buy him as a biologist. Same goes for Hank Azaria. Love him but I didn't believe him for a second. In fact, it surprises me that they didn't cast Jean Reno as an italian guy or something like that. And the woman in it. My God. Okay, there were literally three female characters in the entire movie, two of them were morons, the other one was psychotic, but the female lead, Matthew Broderick's girlfriend, was painful.

Not that she was a bad actor. She wasn't great, but her character. Jesus. She was a manipulative bitch whore and she was so damn stupid. She spent the whole movie either being really mean to Matthew Broderick, or crying about it like the veinless pillow she was. I would honestly rather there be no female characters in a movie than ones like that.

Moving on. The creature effects were lousy. That's all I'm going to say about it. The point of Godzilla is that it's funny watching a guy in a lizard suit stomp around a miniature version of Tokyo. There is nothing remotely funny about a crappy looking CG lizard trashing a crappy looking CG New York. If you're going to rip-off Jurassic Park, at least do it right.

Also, man, passing the blame for the monster on to the French was a really shitty move. I mean, no one's going to believe it coz the USA did way more nuclear testing than the French. They're just trying to get them in trouble. This movie was just so unabashadly... American it made me sick. It was all like, "Yay, America! We're cleaning up the mess those filthy cigarette smoking, sex happy, coffee snobs made" Bullshit.

Finally, there's the crappy music. I don't ordinarily feel it necessary to make a point of the sucky music, but, you know, the music in this movie bordered on ridiculous. Every piece of music sounded like the dramatic end-of-movie music and was never appropriate to the scene. Ever. I swear to God, any time there was music I thought to myself 'wow, this is in the wrong place'. Although, really, the only way I would have been happy would have been if the song 'Godzilla' by Blue Oyster Cult had been on there in a loop.

Speaking of which, here it is...

Anyway, this movie was a pile of crap and Roland Emmerich deserves to be executed for his crimes. The only one of his movies I've seen which I can stand is Independance Day and admittedly, that movie sucked with a vengeance (Mars Attacks! was a vastly superior film). His latest shockingly bad flick was 10,000 BC. By far one of the shittiest movies I've ever seen.

I honestly don't know why people make such loud noises about the films of Uwe Boll when this Emmerich guy is clearly much more dangerous. I mean, his movies are fairly high budget and a lot of them clean up. Uwe Boll's movies all suck on every possible level, but the budget is also crap and I don't think anybody even watches them. Those that do know they're in for something terrible.

But yeah. I pretty much spent this whole movie talknig about what a piece of crap it was which isn't a very good sign.

Ech. I've talked about this pile of crud for far too long.

END

Directed by: Roland Emmerich. Written by: Roland Emmerich & Dean Devlin. Starring: Matthew Broderick, Maria Pittilo, Jean Reno, Hank Azaria, Arabella Field, Harry Shearer.