Godzilla

Rating:
Summary: Could Have Gone Far With Better Actors
Review: Okay the film was called Godzilla. Which meant I expected to see Godzilla most of the movie instead I didn't see him but four times. This was the most hyped movie of 1998 and one of the most disappointing. Everywhere you looked it said " SIZE DOES MATTER " and with Godzilla being so huge, there should have been more scenes concentrated on the beast instead of the bad actors around it.

The biggest mistake, casting Matthew Broderick as the star. You have blockbuster material from the crew of Independence Day yet you get someone as boring and bland as Broderick? The last hit movie I remember him in was Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Since the early 90's he hasn't done anything worth mentioning, so why would someone get him to star in this film? Big name action figures like Wesley Snipes or Arnold S. would have helped this along but the film fizzled before it began. You have a blond woman no one knows and Hank Azaria ( a lame television actor ) to round out the cast. The movie needed more famous actors known for blockbusters. I would have preferred the older Harrison Ford to the sickening Broderick any day. Most of the characters were supporting and there were too many military shot scenes. Godzilla didn't even get a chance to roam around before the town was evacuated and we spend the next 90 minutes watching boring shooting scenes. Where's the fun in seeing Godzilla if he doesn't scare the hell out of people or stomp down buildings? The film turned from Godzilla to Attack of the Baby Godzillas. The second half of the movie was an insult to anyone with an IQ over two. Baby Godzillas chasing people around in an empty building? Oh yeah, that's interesting...YAWN.

The plot was something I couldn't explain even today...because I don't know it! The scenery was dark and drab simply to cover up the poor special effects. It rained throughout the entire film which seemed the only thing keeping me awake. I had to admit that this Godzilla monster rocked, but the movie didn't do him justice. I was hoping, praying that this movie would surpass the earnings of that sappy Titanic and become the biggest movie ever. So much for wishful thinking. Godzilla is a big boring mess and the only thing that will MATTER to you is when it's finally over. I suggest everyone watch it once, but anything more than that is suicide.

Rating:
Summary: A real Tri-Star Pictures Bomb
Review: In 1998, Tri-Star Pictures declared Godzilla to be the biggest blockbuster of the summer. Even though during production, they did not show what Godzilla would look like in the finished film. When the movie was released, it turned out to be a disaster, the likes of which we had not seen since Waterworld. Not only was the movie terribly casted and badly scripted, but "Godzilla" looked like a giant Velicraptor with plates, who would run away from choppers and tanks, and had the ability to lay "Eggs" in the NYC sewer system. Oh please. They should have just canned this whole stupid film project and gone directly to video where no one would watch it. Audiences quickly abandoned this turkey and went to other movie plays, and Tri-Star has not regained any credibility since.

Rating:
Summary: No Shelter? Where else can i find it?
Review: Sorry, i guess this review won't be 'helpful'. But I was just wondering: is this the only place i can find No Shelter? That song rules... Rage is so good. But anyway, post a review if you know like a singles cd or demo or something that it's on, cuz i ain't shellin out $10.00 for one song. So anyway, sorry i haven't heard it, the movie and the rest of the soundtrack look terrible, too.............

Rating:
Summary: Eat me Godzilla!
Review: Okay. What has gone wrong here? Everything has. Everything is wrong about this moive to Siskel and Ebert as the mayors of New York City to that idiotic thing about the rain. This is NOT Godzilla. In other Godzilla movies, we don't see it rain and rain and rain and rain and rain and rain and....well, you get the idea. Did I mention the rain? Good. And what about that subplot, eh? Could it be more annoying? What? You say it can? Oh yeah...I guess the French secret service is more annoying than the "long-lost love" garbage. All in all, I would've enjoyed being eaten by Godzilla then by watching this movie.

Rating:
Summary: THE BUBONIC PLAGIARISTS
Review: Probably more films have been ripped off for this effort than I have managed to spot, but for the benefit of younger viewers here are those I have noticed --
1. King Kong. He was shot down by planes on top of the Empire State building, this new Godzilla is similarly zapped on top of Brooklyn Bridge.

2. The Beast from [I forget exactly how many] Thousand Fathoms. This has the rearing-up-out-of-the-East-River motif shamelessly replicated here.

3. Greatly-enlarged-atomic-mutations movies. The great ur-movie of the genre was THEM!, about the giant ants. That started in the desert, but They got nto the Ballona storm drains in LA, much as this Godzilla gets into the New York subway. THEM! was followed by many derivatives, usually at lower cost e.g. The Deadly Mantis, of which species there was happily only one exemplar. In a film with so many parts for Frenchmen I can only remark 'deja vu' with regard to this much-hacked-at theme.

4. Alien and its successors. I could not credit the sheer effrontery of the borrowing of the 'eggs' scene. This particular Godzilla seems to me to resemble the Alien to some extent, but to take the borrowing back 'a generation', so to speak, does anyone besides me think that the Alien in its turn was cribbed from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwock?

5. Jurassic Park, as widely noted in other reviews, and I am sure also The Lost World, which I have not myself seen.

It nearly makes me weep. For many years I was a closet Godzilla-movies junkie. He was nothing so banal as an atomic mutation but a completely unique creature. He started his career as a baddy, but became a goodie gradually, the transformation being complete by the time of the celebrated Japanese series in which he inhabited an island with a variety of other gargantuan freaks, emerging to save the planet from assorted space-interlopers with much trampling of the industrial infrastructure and much zotting of the intruders with atomic rays emanating from the region of his molars. I couldn't quite tell from this film whether a number of Independence-Day-style fireball effects came from Godzilla or from some other source, and I am assuredly not going to watch it again to check this. To an ageing former Godzilla-devotee this film is a perfect outrage, the crowning atrocity being that this Godzilla is at least hermaphrodite or perhaps even downright female. The ending is exactly what you would expect, leaving the door open for Daughter-of-Godzilla and other similar horrors unthought-of in the golden age of cut-price monster movies in the 50's.

A grudging 2 stars because of the cinematic effects and maybe from a touch of auld-lang-syne nostalgia for my own dear Godzilla of old.

Rating:
Summary: This is NOT Godzilla
Review: Here it is, what every Godzilla fan wanted. Hollywood and a big budget, and this is all we got? First off, the French? The French saves the day? Please, my mother can beat the French. Second, a lame storyline, it is like Jurassic Park in NYC. Babyzilla's that look like raptors. The king of all movie mistakes, you have a product that fans all around the world know, and YOU CHANGE IT? Give me a man in a rubber suit that looks like a T-Rex than a CGI iguana on steroids? No radioactive fire-breath, no one running thru the streets of NYC screaming Godzilla! Thank God, Toho came out with Godzilla 2000 and basically said "Forgive us for letting Hollywood make that horrible movie! Here is what you wanted!"

Rating:
Summary: GODZILLA: Better Off Dead!
Review: A big-budget American version of Japan's most beloved import? How could it fail? Well, whatever could go wrong did. This mega-hyped disaster of a monster movie was a thinly-disguised rip-off of "Jurassic Park" that pretty much used the name "Godzilla" to hide the fact that it was so blatanly unoriginal.

The story follows Dr. Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) as he is called into investigate a mysterious shipwreck off the coast of some Asian territory. As it turns out, these problems are actually being caused by a radioactive iguana on a collision course with New York City. When the creature arrive, all hell breaks loose and the army is called in to take it out. After several failed attempts, the monster ends up under the city as Broderick and a team of French special operatives head to the ruins of what was once Madison Sqaure Garden to hunt down the nest. Chaos ensues again and they end up getting chased through the city by the monster for one big predictable finale.

The idea of making a Godzilla movie where Godzilla does not use his infamous radioactive breath is about as half-baked an idea as Sean Cunningham doing a Jason movie without using the hockey mask. Here in lies the biggest problem with major studios, these days. They are so consumed by the thought of making money that they never really stop and think about what the true fans of the movies want to see. I have always felt that if you are going to make a remake or a sequel or a big-budget movie based on a TV series, that it should at the very least offer some type of improvement or something new over the original. The "Godzilla" in this movie is esentially a giant one-dimenionsal lizard that seems more like the monster featured in "Varan The Unbelivable" than that of the classic Godzilla. Let's face it. The older Godzilla would stomp the life out of this one. Not to mention that the makers of this movie did a much better job at the sci-fi disaster angle with their last film, "Independence Day" and Godzilla was much more meaningful in "Godzilla 1985". This movie falls flat on its face.

Rating:
Summary: Some think not, but I think so, Great Movie
Review: This movie has great special effects (a thing I really enjoy), and a good storyline. For those who don't know the storyline, it's basically starts of with a nuclear bomb testing. Eventually the US army finds traces of a giant creature, then Godzilla shows up one day in New York to wreak havoc. The find out that nuclear testings made a lizzard grow really really big into Godzilla. From here, the army tries to catch it (using more really good special effects), but many problems make this a lot harder than they thought it would be. Overall, I think this move is most definitely worth seeing (preferably on a rainy day).

Rating:
Summary: really deserves 3.5 stars...good movie
Review: Godzilla, America's version kept true to the original story line in that Godzilla was created through Atomic bomb testing. the movie starts of good, then goes bad. it goes from Godzilla, to Jurassic Park with little baby Godzillas, literally thousands of them chasing Matthew Broderick and company throughout Madison Square Garden.

this whole baby godzilla sequence really took away from what was becoming a pretty good movie.

then ending scene is taken directly from King Kong, in where you here the heart beat of Godzilla until he eventually dies.

being a Godzilla movie, people are going to watch it, and most people might be disapointed with the outcome, i know i was. this Godzilla movie had so much to gain, it had awsome trailers, and the merchandising for the movie was also good, but the movie never really lived up to it.

the new version of Godzilla is a bit more realistic in the sense that if this ever really happened, Godzilla might like more like his true lizard form.

i also wish that the DVD had more to offer. what happened to Puffy's Video for Godzilla? or how about more behind the scene featuretts?

still, Godzilla is Godzilla. i just wish they would make a 2nd one to make up for this one.

Rating:
Summary: What a Disappointment!!!
Review: Well, I admit I was interested in this movie when it came out. I actually saw it in the IMAX--what a waste of money! First, the two main characters seem like mindless airheads. I expected more from Matthew Broderick. Still, it is GODZILLA after all and part of the old school Godzilla was the whole campiness of it all. I was disappointed more than anything else...