Movie Review: Godzilla (2014)

Are you planning to watch "Godzilla" this weekend?

Don't.

For a giant reptile used to crunching his way through skyscrapers, Godzilla gets precious little screen time in this 2014 reboot of the film franchise. And he's fat -- looking more like a grumpy teddy bear who's had one too many McDonald's happy meals.

Instead, all the action is hogged by a pair of mutant creatures with inbuilt GPS capabilities who pick San Francisco as their dream destination to mate and make a million monster babies.

To thwart their parental urges, British director Gareth Edwards relies on a young soldier (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), his nuclear scientist dad (Bryan Cranston), several heroic Americans, one Japanese scientist and hordes of dispensable humans - the ones who usually meet a bloody end in disaster movies.

There are some good destruction sequences in CGI (including one on the Golden Gate bridge), but those are few and far between in a movie that plods through the first 90 minutes, focusing on revealing how all those decades-old nuclear tests were cover-ups for attempts to kill the creatures.

Boring, boring, boring. The slow build-up makes the 1998 Hollywood version of "Godzilla" seem like an Oscar winner. And that’s high praise. Give me an overdose of burning buildings, close shaves, death-defying stunts, apocalyptic thrills, monster mayhem. Why else would I watch "Godzilla"?

Director Edwards said he tried to recapture the style of film classics such as "Jaws," "Alien" and "King Kong."

"All that spectacle and amazing imagery is kind of pointless if you're not invested in caring about the characters that are affected by it," he told Reuters in an interview.

The problem is there are too many good actors in the film but they don't do anything. I never really cared about what happened to their characters. "Godzilla" has its moments but he should have stomped around a bit more.

Two out of five stars for this monster disappointment.