What is our fascination with the destruction of New York City? There has to be something, because Godzilla was the second in a string of Spring and Summer pictures to trash the Big Apple.
So far, New York has been completely submersed by a 200-foot-tall tsunami (Deep Impact), and in July it will be smashed into the ground by a meteor shower (Armageddon). Currently, New York is being ransacked by everyone's favorite fire breathing dinosaur, Godzilla.
All of us are familiar with the wrestler-in-a-rubber-suit Godzilla of old. In the remake, writer-director Robert Emmerich (who leveled New York once before in 1996's summer blockbuster, Independence Day) uses Spielberg-like Jurassic Park graphics to create the new monster. The striking resemblence to the Jurassic Park's tyrannosaurus is all too strong. Emmerson and cowriter/producer Dean Devlin borrow things from just about every movie ever made except Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Go fig! This should remind us of Independence Day's tactic of ripping off Return of the Jedi. (Stealing an enemy ship to infiltrate the base and take out the shield generator? C'mon!)
A plot is barely established when a young nuclear scientist, played weakly by Matthew Broderick discovers that Godzilla is a product of French nuclear tests in the Pacific that reproduces asexually. The hunt is on for the nest by Broderick and a group of French special agents while the U.S. military chases Godzilla up and down the streets of Manhattan.
After two and a half hours of watching Godzilla run the gauntlet around New York, seemingly aimlessly most of the time, everyone will have pretty much gotten accustomed to the shock of Godzilla's transformation from man-lizard to lizard-dinosaur. Also by that time, movie-goers will have be sick of the ridiculous side plots involving Matthew Broderick and his loser girlfriend or the zany antics of mayor Ebert and his assistant, Gene, who can't seem to agree on anything! A knee-slapping riot! :-(
There were, however, three good points of my Godzilla Experience
Concluding as I did similarly with my Lost World Review, don't see Godzilla if you're looking to see a movie like the one you saw on Channel 5 when you were seven years old and home sick, eating toast.
Oh, and one note to the pilot of Echo 4:
HELICOPTERS CAN GO UP, TOO!!!!
-Ethan Kaplan
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5/24/98