It’s campy, cheesy, comical film-star Godzilla versus the Flying Rock: prepare to crumble. [PG]
By: Kam Williams
Artistically-speaking, the Japanese have long been praised as great imitators. But this has been a particularly horrible year for Japanese knock-off films. Kikujiro (All About My Mother rip-off), Adrenaline Drive (Analyze This rip-off), Pokémon 2000 (Pokémon 1999 rip-off) and now, Godzilla 2000, the 33rd installment in the series.
The early Godzilla flicks, a crude, cut-and-paste compendium of cheesy special effects and comically-dubbed dialogue, enjoyed a campy cool cachet the plodding, rubber-suited monster stomping an HO-scale model of Tokyo, helpless women running as though their shoes were on the wrong feet. The bespectacled minister of defense calls the play-by-play in a control tower through prominently protruding teeth: "The monster is attacking the city!" or "Godzilla has returned to the sea!"
You know, we’ve made some significant technological advances in special effects since 1954, when the original Gojira flick was released. But you wouldn’t know it from viewing Godzilla 2000. Takao Okawara, purist director of Godzilla vs. Destroyer (1995), Godzilla vs. Super-Mechagodzilla (1993) and Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992), banks on the reverse chic appeal of the low-tech approach. I suppose this film might find its audience in zany ‘zillaphiles and mothers desperate for any PG baby-sitter offering an opportunity for a power nap.
But Godzilla 2000 is destined to disappoint anyone expecting to howl at a film that’s so bad, it’s funny. It’s not even stupid funny. Yes, the dubbing is deliberately atrocious. Yes, the editing is insulting. So why doesn’t it work? It could be that this film comes too close on the heels of Godzilla, the 1998 Hollywood epic, which featured state-of-the-art visual effects and digital technology. Maybe it’s simply time for even the Japanese Godzilla to lumber across the bridge to the 21st Century.
Donning the latex suit for the first time in the title role is gymnast/stuntman Tsutomu Kitagawa. The plot line, right out of the Godzilla cliché catalog, has the massive reptile re-emerging from the sea at a remote lighthouse and triggering a primeval tidal wave of terror on shore. Curiously, the creature was already expected by the Godzilla Prediction Network Mobile Unit, which is Johnny-on-the-spot to capture the first photos. Then, the gargantuan Alien Rock Monster also appears and the battle royal is on.
All the while, we’re treated to painfully mean-spirited dialogue, dubbed to make every character sound like a spoiled, snippy Valley Girl. "That damn teriyaki is cold again." "Imbecile!" "Great Caesar’s Ghost!" Who knows what they’re really saying in Japanese? Who cares? The movie doesn’t really need sound.
Rated PG for explosives, pyrotechnics and monster hand-to-mouth combat.
For an alphabetical listing of movie reviews from the past six months, click here.