Movie Review - Godzilla

Godzilla (2014)

Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olson, Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, and Juliette Binoche

Directed by Gareth Edwards

Perhaps being my most eagerly anticipated film of the summer (which looks incredibly weak overall movie-wise) did Godzilla in, but I found this reinvention of the classic Japanese monster movie a pretty big disappointment.  Part of me respects the fact that director Gareth Edwards and screenwriter Max Borenstein were ballsy enough to keep the title figure off the screen for all but (seemingly) ten minutes of the film, but the other part of me can't help but think they squandered away their money shots with the creature.

However, let's just say that I'm fine with Godzilla not being the film's focal point.  That notion would be totally true if the film's centerpiece -- the humans who are facing an epic battle between Godzilla and to Mothra-esque creatures -- had any modicum of interesting storyline to latch onto.  There's actually been much talk about Aaron Taylor-Johnson (whose US solider character is the lead) and his inability to emote properly, but I found that the script didn't give him a damn thing to do.  For a film that follows this guy around and tries to make us connect with him by giving him a plotline about returning home to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) after visiting his crazy father (Bryan Cranston) in Japan, Taylor-Johnson is in this movie solely to react to the CGI-ness of the monsters rampaging around him.  Without being the impetus of a single plot point, I found myself detached too much from his character and the story.

In the film's opening act, we are given a bit of background which admittedly does a decent job about setting up how Godzilla and these two gigantic winged creatures he fights manifested themselves thanks to radiation in the 1950s.  This is essentially where the rest of the film's cast -- Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, and Juliette Binoche -- come into play.  Watanabe and Hawkins are here simply to elucidate the scientific goings-on, Binoche is essentially a walk-on cameo, and Cranston -- well, I'm warning you that I'm about to say something that Breaking Bad fans (myself being one of them) may find utterly sacrilegious -- overacts to a point of oddness.  Cranston's character is the first major player we meet in the film and at first, I actually thought Cranston was paying homage to the 1960s Godzilla films of yore.  However, as the film progressed, I realized that no one else was playing up the "corny factor" and that Cranston was just doing some schticky overly dramatic thing on his own accord.

If the fact that I've not talked about Godzilla much in this review seems a little odd that's because, as I already mentioned, Godzilla isn't in the flick all that much.  Once again, for me, this would've been a perfectly acceptable conceit had the humans in this story been given any type of emotional arc I could've looked to for some meatiness in terms of plot.  With that not being given to me, Godzilla ends up falling flat.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-