Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars
Bottom Line: You’ve got monsters. You’ve got monsters fighting. That’s all you need to know. Either it appeals to you or it does not.
I spent so much time discussing this movie with a friend who can only be described as a Godzilla super-fan that I completely forgot to write my review about it. For shame!
Clearly, anyone who is going to see a Godzilla movie for the plot is woefully ignorant of every Godzilla movie that has come before. If it can be called a plot, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” wants us to believe that a well-respected scientist has proven scientifically that the only way to save the Earth from environmental destruction is to release all the monsters and balance will be restored to Earth by science. Also, science. It’s absolutely ridiculous. If the entire dialogue just consisted of people saying “Science science science” to each other, it would have made more sense. But those monsters aren’t going to release themselves so we have to suffer through the plot. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as stuff has to be loosely tied together somehow, but G:KOTM spends entirely too much time on the plot and not what it’s supposed to be: big bad monsters duking it out for supremacy.
When the movie does actually get to the big bad monsters duking it out for supremacy, it’s pretty good. The fights are as epic as you’d expect from monsters the size of skyscrapers. Special attacks are peppered throughout in order to keep the fighting spicy. The only time the fighting gets annoying is when they continually show the ant-humans foolishly traipsing underfoot of the titans. I mean WHY?!?! I mean, I get you can’t predict where they are going to decide to throw down, but when commence fisticuffs, run! AWAY! Not back and forth. Maybe it would have been worth it if they showed more stupid humans being splatted, but there are woeful few of those too.
A lot of the Godzilla mythos is pretty cool and it is explored fairly well in this movie, enough to appease both Godzilla novices and superdorks. The fights really are super fun so if you think that’s enough of a reason to go see a movie, you will likely enjoy G:KOTM. If you want a movie with plot, stay reasonably far away unless you also like making fun of bad plots.