Godzilla 2000 is a cheeseball delight, creature feature fun for the whole family.
That is especially true for fans of the Japanese originals in this long-running series, which got sidetracked when Hollywood got involved and Roland Emmerich made his ill-advised U.S. version.
The Japanese Godzilla movies are horribly acted, badly dubbed from Japanese into English, full of dubious science and as smart as a bag of rocks. That is their charm. The new one -- the 23rd Godzilla movie since its leather-lunged, rip-roarin' debut in 1954 -- is no exception.
So the movie is an hysterical hoot with audiences cheering the first glimpse of the lovable lizard and rooting for him all the way as he stomps out half of Toyko while saving mankind from a fate even more horrifying than him.
The first Godzilla -- or Gojira as it was known originally in Japan -- took that country by storm in November of 1954. On the surface, it seemed like escapist fare for a war-ravaged, defeated nation. But, behind the B-movie facade was a serious commentary on the dawning of the nuclear age.
Not surprisingly, that theme is less obvious in the 1955 U.S. re-edit that was released as Godzilla, King Of The Monsters, complete with Raymond Burr's scenes pasted in between dubbed Japanese scenes.
The latest film doesn't bother with such nonsense. It is all Japanese with really awful studio-bound actors voicing the lines in English and paying no attention to the movement of the on-screen players' mouths. That, combined with the ludicrous dialogue, makes Godzilla 2000 even funnier for us.
As for the story, it is equally ridiculous. Godzilla awakens, tears up an island, destroys some power plants and heads to Tokyo for no reason. Meanwhile, because of human ignorance, a 60 million-year-old alien spaceship is reactivated and its still-living, unseen inhabitants unleash destructive forces that only the mighty Godzilla can combat.
The human story involves a kindly, monster-friendly scientist (Takehiro Murata) who is head of the Godzilla Prediction Network. He runs around with a bunch of hi-tech equipment, a fiesty young daughter (Mayu Suzuki) and a whiny if babe-alicious photo-journalist (Naomi Nishida). The nemesis for this trio of good-guy characters is the arrogant and evil spy chief (Hiroshi Abe).
Critically, as has been true since the first Godzilla movie, the monster is portrayed by a man in a latex suit. In this case, former gymnast Tsutomi Kitagawa has the role. It helps give Godzilla a human-sized, emotionally charged personality, even if he is shot against miniatures and meant to be 170 feet tall (six feet taller than the first Godzilla, but still much shorter than the 328-foot giant of the early 1990s).
I'm certain a lot of people will find Godzilla 2000 silly, stupid and/or annoying. Everyone else can enjoy the fun.
(This film is rated PG)
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