Dir Roland Emmerich

Written by Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich, Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio

Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Kevin Dunn, Michael Learner, Arabella Field, Vicki Lewis, Doug Savant.

A giant lizard like creature, called kojira (or Godzilla) has emerged, and heads to New York City. The army enlists Dr Nick Tatopolous (Broderick) for his expertise, and soon he is reunited with his long lost love Audrey (Pitillo) who is a wannabe reporter.

Silly ‘not Godzilla’ movie where director Emmerich took the creative approach to change the design of the title character. Not only is this not Godzilla, the final act almost feels like a poor attempt at Jurassic Park.

The characters are only okay, but Broderick is out of his element in the disaster movie hero/lead. There is a cliché relationship drama that doesn’t work between himself and Pitillo. Reno is good as the French hero, trying to do right by his country – and was riding high his popularity. The remaining cast, with plenty of Simpsons cast (Azaria, Shearer and Nancy Cartwright). There is also a humours nod to Siskel and Ebert with Mayor Ebert and his aide Gene. Thumbs up for the joke, thumbs down for the movie.

The screenplay has some fun moments, with the characters unable to pronounce Tatopolous (named after the person who designed the new Godzilla) and there is some okay dialogue. There are some poorly aged word usages early on, and it felt like some of the accents were designed to play on the New York dialect.

The fact that Godzilla is the antagonist in the film was a 180 from what he should be, as he is more of an anti-hero in mythology.

The score was quite dynamic from David Arnold, and I felt like there may have been some inspiration from other action films from the early 90’s.

There is an arrogant set up for a sequel that never occurred.