Godzilla (1998).

Review #2161: Godzilla. 

Cast: 

Matthew Broderick (Dr. Niko "Nick" Tatopoulos), Jean Reno (Philippe Roaché), Maria Pitillo (Audrey Timmonds), Hank Azaria (Victor "Animal" Palotti), Kevin Dunn (Colonel Hicks), Michael Lerner (Mayor Ebert), Harry Shearer (Charles Caiman), Arabella Field (Lucy Palotti), Vicki Lewis (Dr. Elsie Chapman), Lorry Goldman (Gene), Doug Savant (Sergeant O'Neal), Malcolm Danare (Dr. Mendel Craven), Ralph Manza (Fisherman Joe), and Glenn Morshower (Kyle Terrington) Directed by Roland Emmerich (#193 - Independence Day and #413 - The Patriot)

Review: 

"I’m totally proud of Godzilla. I’m always saying this, I mean I know there’s a lot of naysayers, but I’m proud of it. I’m not really a fanboy, so I was changing Godzilla. It was also, probably, a situation that I was a little bit talked into it.”

Why should I be surprised? Actually, this is one time where I'm glad I was born in 1996, because I really don't want to know how the hype would have been if I was at least ten years old for the release of this film, which is now 25 years old. This is the kind of movie that had a whole promo campaign all about "Size Does Matter". The idea for an American Godzilla wasn't too farfetched. There had been dubs released in theaters, if you recall: the original 1954 film got turned into Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), the 1955 sequel got turned into Gigantis, the Fire Monster (1959), oh, Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965) was co-produced by Toho and UPA, and The Return of Godzilla (1984) got turned into Godzilla 1985. Plans to make a feature film started bubbling in 1992, when TriStar announced they acquired the rights to the character from Toho to make a trilogy of films. Jan de Bont was considered to direct by 1994 for a 1996 release, and he apparently had something in mind involving Atlanteans, a "Gryphon", and a creature designed by Stan Winston. Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio were approached to do the screenplay, although Don Macpherson was later hired to do re-writes. Budget concerns by TriStar eventually led de Bont off the project in favor of doing Twister. Despite all of this, in 1996 (the year after Toho tried to end their series with Godzilla vs. Destoroyah), Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin (right before the release of Independence Day, and I would like to point out that Emmerich apparently was big on doing his next film involving a meteor hitting Earth inspired by The Right Stuff) were hired to craft a Godzilla film, complete with Patrick Tatopoulos being hired to design an animal (not a monster) that would move fast. Emmerich and Devlin were credited with the screenplay and also the story (with Elliott and Rossio) while Devlin served as a producer. Around-the-clock work in trying to get the effects (a good deal done in CG) done meant that a final cut was only assembled just days before the premiere, with a lack of studio screenings being done before its release in May (three months later, an animated series came out as a follow-up that ended up lasting until 2000). The film, made for over $100 million, was one that made money, but a general lack of enthusiasm all the way around led to TriStar letting the sequel rights expire in 2003. Emmerich was apparently never a big Godzilla fan, describing them as just "weekend matinees you saw as a kid...you'd go with all your friends and just laugh" (he liked the first but apparently wasn't big on the follow-ups with monsters fighting each other). Devlin later stated his belief that there were two mistakes that were made with the film and its script: a lack of commitment in what Godzilla was as a character (i.e, hero or villain, since they went with "just simply an animal trying to survive") and lending its exposition of the character backgrounds in the middle of the film rather than in the start. Rossio wrote a whole essay with the title "The One Hundred Million Dollar Mistake". Some have mockingly renamed the film to such titles as "G.I.N.O." (Godzilla In Name Only) or "Zilla", and years later, Toho even went with a "Zilla" trademark. TriStar handled the distribution for a dubbed version Godzilla 2000 (which started production shortly after the release of this film) in 2000, funny enough.

At least Devlin could be given credit for trying. But Emmerich? No, he screwed up a layup of making a disaster movie where a monster goes around breathing fire and wreaking havoc that could play like an Irwin Allen epic. I haven't watched an Emmerich film in a decade, but this is shovelware for tbe birds. You might say, hey, he tries to make popcorn entertainment movies, why not give him a break if you weren't too hard on Independence Day and The Patriot...? Nah, I can't give credit here, because this being the first all-around American rendition of a Godzilla film makes for the easiest target to call a piece of crap in all of history. This is a movie that names two characters after prominent critics of Emmerich's work and doesn't even take the chance to squish them. This is a movie where the creature can just disappear for chunks of the film and... reproduce asexually while having an origin of nuclear testing...by the French. I think being hard on this stupid film is not only a wise idea but a righteous one. 2024 will see a fourth Godzilla film from the States (oddly enough, Rossio co-wrote the story to Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire [2024]), and it likely will dwarf the one presented here by the simple act that it will be made by someone who cares about what they are making. It makes Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, that movie with dubbing and Raymond Burr playing a stand-in explaining stuff, look like a godsend in comparison. Fiery breath and an underwhelming human cast is the equivalent of being served a hamburger filled with plastic while the soda cup is filled with stuff from 1978. 

At least Broderick seems to be engaging with his role rather than looking like he wants to shrink away in humiliation. That doesn't make it any easier to bear the idea that a film about a monster (sorry, animal, but that just sounds stupid) with the most boring human characters to support it. Lame gags about his character name and a horribly misplaced timing of trying to get us to be on these characters for the middle have him fare nearly the worst of everyone. According to one source, a lead executive was so displeased at what he saw from Pitillo's performance that he wanted to find someone to re-voice the role. I would like to point out that she was one of three folks that had three-film contracts for Godzilla (alongside Broderick and Reno). How mean could I possibly be? Well, I will simply just say that she would probably be better fit for the third lead in a Gamera film. Most perplexing is Reno, if only because again, when I think of guilt and trying to deal with what they create, a bunch of bumbling French operatives is not high on the list. What exactly is the purpose of having accomplishes all being named Jean? With the various little attempts at humor involving bad coffee, I'm almost surprised they didn't give the team a skunk mascot. Lerner and Dunn are probably the only highlights of the film, and all they are doing is just stuff you would expect from people playing to the check that we like. It isn't even worth making a reference with talking about Azaria and Shearer. It meanders for over two hours and fails to even reach half of the level of something like say, The Towering Inferno ever did. The "asexual reproduction" makes the whole thing preposterous, the sequences of baby Godzillas elevates it further, the end sequence of Godzilla being taken down by military missiles closes the entire thing out to the stupidest possible level, because if there is anything to learn from a series about a radioactive monster and consequences, the best way for it to go down is a credibly interesting presence to counteract it...i.e., not the military. Emmerich can say whatever he wants about what he thought about getting into the project or the result, the bottom line is that this is a hacky movie that isn't particularly thrilling or particularly noteworthy for spectacle that hadn't been done in Jurassic Park (or its mediocre sequel) or other Godzilla films before it. I can't claim to have seen all of those feature films, but even the ones that are just okay at best knew that they were trying to make something worthwhile for an audience to watch. This just exudes misery.

Overall, I give it 3 out of 10 stars.

In some ways, every year gets better and better for Movie Night. Happy 13th anniversary, folks. Two record-setting months of interesting reviews made a useful 2023 and hopefully sets the stage for some re-invention in 2024.

Rollerball (2002).

Review #1270: Rollerball (2002).

Cast: 
Chris Klein (Jonathan Cross), Jean Reno (Alexi Petrovich), LL Cool J (Marcus Ridley), Rebecca Romijn (Aurora), Naveen Andrews (Sanjay), Mike Dopud (Michael), Kata Dobó (Katya Dobolakova), Lucia Rijker (Lucia Ryjker), Oleg Taktarov (Oleg Denekin), Paul Heyman (Sports Announcer), and Janet Wright (Coach Olga) Directed by John McTiernan (#014 - Die Hard, #018 - Die Hard with a Vengeance, #080 - The Hunt for Red October, #325 - Predator, and #576 - Last Action Hero)

Review: 
1000 word score!

It should only figure that someone made a remake of Rollerball (1975). After all, one can only take so many things from the 1960s or 1980s to shamelessly make again without doing anything new or different (unless you decide to make a nostalgia cashgrab sequel, of course) before thinking about something as ridiculous yet memorable like that particular film and think you can do better. The original film, written by William Harrison from his short story with direction by Norman Jewison, was a film about one man fighting against a corporation's decision to force him out of the senseless (yet capably watchable) sport in the not too distant future. A sport that looked like a mix of hockey, football and roller derby looked pretty violent, but at least you could get the idea that the film had some sort of interest in actually saying something meaningful besides being a sci-fi sports flick. The remake, directed by McTiernan with a script from Larry Ferguson and John Pogue that was modified to emphasize the action and nothing else. Is this a joke? Did someone with such a distinguished career as McTiernan (at least until he got into legal trouble, which occurred due to hiring someone to wiretap one of the other producers of this film and then lying about it) really make a film with so many mind-boggling bad decisions? When the best presence in the film is professional wrestling advocate Paul Heyman, you really messed things up. Watching a hour of wrestling entertainment (take your pick) would likely be more convincing, since at least you can mostly tell what is going on, as opposed to slovenly films like this. You could just write a long screed of things wrong with this film and probably do it in less time than this 98 minute jumble, complete with one less editor than this film had (two, Robert K. Lambert and John Wright) and with less money and effort ($70 million, for which this made less than half back).

This is the kind of film where its friends are Gymkata and Stealth, where one laughs at it hard until they just can't do it anymore. It's the only way to try and make sense of a film that has jumbled action sequences and characters that don't even merit one sentence descriptions on the Internet. It isn't like the original was really great or anything, but at least one could actually say something nice about the lead played by James Caan and not have to immediately roll onto the ground laughing like with this film. Seriously, how could you not laugh at how ridiculous this film is with its main lead? Supposedly, MGM wanted Keanu Reeves to be the star, which is completely believable and also completely hilarious in hindsight with Klein, who looks completely out of his depth here. He isn't the individual fighting against the system here, he just happens to be the latest action figure (namebrand hockey player) being played with in a massive toybox, where things are being thrown around in an attempt at a story like a kid making the rules up as he goes, playing to a crowd of one that is in danger of losing its own audience. Reno seems completely vacant, which one could also say for Andrews, with neither inspiring any sort of adversarial presence that this desperately needs. LL Cool J (who apparently admitted to this film's suckage) is equally not spared from such lameness, and Romijn (with accent and scar in tow) is just as silly to be around. These characters really have as much energy and personality as play figures, where one can look at them and see some sort of expression try to come out. For the toymaster here, all that we can see is a mess that will have to be cleaned up later.

To point all of the severe flaws of this film may be an exercise in verbal spewage, but it is fairly appropriate for a film as sloppy as this one. How does one make a sport as ridiculous as this one (which we see played in Kazakhstan) struggle to get a cable deal in North America? If other sillier (but fairly competent) sports like soccer, e-sports, and cornhole have at least some sort of deal, how does this one fail? Maybe its in the rules, since it's barely comprehensible as a sport at all. The "Instant Global Rating" (one of the "neat" creations of this film's future of 2005, where nothing is different at all, the perfect hipster future) is just as silly, as if one really needs to tell us that "more violence = more curious viewers". Perhaps this sport thinks its biggest competitor is professional wrestling. The icing on the cake is the night vision sequence. It actually was a re-shot scene that was too dark the first time around. Imagine delaying a movie for months (from summer to February) because you couldn't do a chase sequence in the dark properly, then having it be in the film in night-vision for no apparent reason. Geez, the street sequence in the beginning looked more convincing than this. This is just a horrendous experience, through and through, where the unrewarding climax is just the cherry on top on the punch to the face that this movie gives you. This even was at one point slated to be an R-rated film, but bad test screenings led to the digital removal of blood (for sweat) and a romance sequence. I shudder to wonder how worse it was before cuts were made. You would think a film could be made that had some sort of commentary about an audience and their curiosity for violence that didn't turn into an excessive joke on the viewer. It may not be the worst experience one could have with a film, but it surely ranks up there as an insultingly stupid movie that deservedly languishes at pawn shops on the film stack, for good reason.

Overall, I give it 1 out of 10 stars.

Mission: Impossible.

Review #801: Mission: Impossible.

Cast
Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Jon Voight (Jim Phelps), Emmanuelle Béart (Claire Phelps), Henry Czerny (Eugene Kittridge), Jean Reno (Franz Krieger), Ving Rhames (Luther Stickell), Vanessa Redgrave (Max), Kristin Scott Thomas (Sarah Davies), and Emilio Estevez (Jack Harmon) Directed by Brian De Palma.

Review
Today is the 20th anniversary of the release of this film, and I decided to honor that by reviewing it, since it has been a while since I actually watched one of the five films (#128 - Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol). While I will admit I have never watched the television series Mission: Impossible, I went into the movie with the expectation of watching something that would at least be entertaining, not necessarily going into it expecting a completely loyal version of the show. As it turned out, that was probably the right idea, because the original cast did not exactly have a positive reaction to the movie, and Peter Graves (the original Jim Phelps) rejected the offer to play the role again. With all that in mind, the movie was still pretty good for me. Cruise does an excellent job, seeming very comfortable in the role, with his action scenes (and stunt-work) being enjoyable to watch. Voight, while not exactly up to Cruise's strength, is at least a capable villain, with at least some sort of motivation (honestly though I think I would probably take up a hobby instead of well, doing an elaborate ruse). Béart doesn't get much to do, but she is at least decent. My favorites are Rhames and Redgrave, with the former being cool to watch who works well with Cruise, and the latter being an interesting character who's not necessarily a villain, just a middle-man in all of this. The action is well done, being entertaining along with feeling real enough. The movie's story seems destined to try and twist itself almost too much, but it manages to come off as serviceable, with enough spy elements to make for what is at least a fine experience that has spawned four sequels in the 20 years that have passed since this movie's release

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: Flushed Away.

Review #166: Flushed Away.

Cast
Hugh Jackman (Roddy St. James), Kate Winslet (Rita Malone), Ian McKellen (The Toad), Jean Reno (Le Frog), Bill Nighy (Whitey), Andy Serkis (Spike), and Shane Richie (Sid) Directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell.

Review
I began this week with stop motion animation and we end with...computer generated animation. However the animation is meant to look like the traditional clay like figures, which it does. Jackman, Winslet, and McKellen are excellent in their roles (Jackman proving he can do more then just be Wolverine or...Van Helsing). The story is decent, with some good gags that are entertaining enough. This ends Dreamworks Animation Week. Overall, it was a decent week, but how does Dreamworks compare to Pixar, or...Disney? Dreamworks can do good films as I've heard from others, and it can do average to meh as well. But the point is that Dreamworks has good and the meh inside them, and that's all that matters. Thank you for reading this week. This ends Part VII.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.