Sunday, May 25, 2014

Goddamn'zilla: A Review




Godzilla has been a major presence in the pop culture for how many years? 60 long years! Yes! 6 decades of the Royal Monstrosity called Godzilla.

What started off in 1954 as a tokusatsu film went on to become one of the most recognised film franchises of all time. There have been over 30 movies featuring His Monstrosity.  The latest addition being the Legendary Pictures' Godzilla featuring Bryan Cranston and Kick-Ass fame Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

And, Godzilla's a cool guy to hangout with:



THE PLOT

The movie starts off somewhere around 1999 in Philippines, at a digging site where a humongous fossil is found along with a suspicious egg(?) of sorts and it is hinted that something escaped from what was supposed to be another egg. Meanwhile, in Tokyo Joe Brody (Cranston) is a Nuclear Engineer (possibly) working along with his wife at the local nuclear plant. They go off to work and due to some apparently unprecedented seismic activity shit hits the fan and Kaboom! the nuclear plant malfunctions, because that is exactly what such plants do! Brody's wife dies in the accident.

Fast forward 14 years. Sorry, forgot to mention that the Brodys have a whelp of a son named Ford who grows into Aaron Taylor-Johnson! Who is an Explosive Ordinance Disposal Officer in the US Navy. Brody is just back from duty to his home to receive the news of his father's arrest in Japan, because Brody Sr. is a hopeless conspiracy theorist who wants to break into the abandoned plant he worked at. Ford, being a dutiful kid and stuff travels to Japan to get him out. What follows is the birth of a colossal flying cockroach who feeds on radiation instead of the kitchen leftovers, oh btw Brody Sr. dies and his son finds it hard to return back to San Fransisco. And subsequently the US Navy tries to devise plans to bring down the MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism). But to their surprise 2 other MUTOs decide to show up, one of them being the eponymous character, who is supposedly the good monster here. 

THE VERDICT

The movie is painfully slow, with BAD CGI Effects and effectively and expectedly no storyline. Godzilla is a major pop culture icon and deserved better. With the success of Pacific Rim, there was a lot to be expected out of this movie. Where Toro's last venture was more or less on the same lines it was a visual treat, a fast paced sci-fi action movie, Godzilla has failed the viewers on both accounts. 

BOTTOMLINE

Eat a nuclear plant, and burp out stunningly refreshing CGI enabled breath!

Don't waste your money on the tickets, unless you have a fetish for watching a mountain sized lizard burping nuclear radiation on an exceptionally overgrown cockroach. Wait for the television premiere instead.



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