Godzilla (2014)
Be you a trusting mutt, a gullible kid or a grown ass adult, nobody likes the old bait and switch. Just ask Fido after you tell him to jump in the car for a trip to the park and then take him to the vet for shots and a worming. Or talk to the fifth grader who earned straight A’s but didn’t get the promised trip to Disney World. And anyone who’s ever shown up for strippers and blow at his best friend’s house only to walk face first into an intervention knows exactly what the fuck I’m talking about.
So why in the name of Eccentrica Gallumbits would you make a giant-fighting-monsters movie that features less than 10 minutes of giant fucking monsters actually fucking fighting?!!
And why would you put Bryan Breaking Bad Cranston front and center in all your advertising only to whack him during the first reel of your creature feature and then hand things off to the kid from the Kick-Ass movies (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who’s so bland they prescribe him for upset stomachs? That’s way too much like telling me I get to go balls deep in Keira Knightley but when I open the door Courtney Love is standing there . . . and she hasn’t bathed in weeks. (So, you know, just regular Courtney Love.)
To top things off, why would you have Elizabeth Olsen, whose nickname might as well be Tits McGee given that she’s whipped out her sweater puppies in virtually every other movie she’s been in, play Taylor-Johnson’s wife who, due to Godzilla’s PG-13 rating, must remain frustratingly fully clothed at all times?
You filthy, lying fucks!
That's Godzilla in a nutshell. Well, that and the fact that in this reboot the world’s most famous giant, irradiated iguana has cankles and a beer gut. I kid you not.
Even when he tries to hit one of the paint-by-numbers beats of the action movie playbook, like having a character outrun an explosion or parachute in to save the day, Godzilla director Gareth Edwards screws the pooch so bestialitastically that you wonder why anyone lets him within a mile of a movie set.
Juliette Binoche (obviously questioning her career choices since The Unbearable Lightness of Being) spends literal minutes running down a tunnel away from an impossibly slow-moving cloud of radioactive gas. Tourists casually jog to safety in front of a tsunami that obliterates half of a city but doesn't even dampen their shirttails. HALO jumpers wait until they’re about 20 feet off the ground before pulling their ripcords yet land miraculously unscathed. And our “hero” gets helicoptered all of a quarter mile away from ground zero before a NUCLEAR FUCKING BOMB goes off while he gazes calmly down at the blast and the breeze gently tousles his hair.
Godzilla is such a joyless slog that you can hear the big guy himself thinking, “I need a drink.” as he slouches off towards Mariana Trenchehem before the end credits roll.
Kaiju!
Gesundheit.
September 28, 2014 (Video release review rather than theatrical release review. Because fuck you.)