The first made-in-Japan monster movie in general release in the U.S. since Godzilla 1985, complete with bad English dubbing and a barrel of laughable lines: "Quit your bitchin'." "I guarantee it'll go through Godzilla like crap through a goose." "He's coming. Get going." "Did you see that flying rock go by?" "Great Caesar's ghost!" It comes as a wonderful relief, after the Hollywood version of two years earlier, to realize that we do not have to start back again at square one. There is already a Godzilla Prediction Network on the lookout, and a raging debate within the scientific community over the relative desirability of trying to destroy the beast or trying to understand him. (On the understanding side, a sitcommy father-daughter team; on the destructive side, a baritone-voiced business suit.) The mid-tech special effects, state-of-the-art circa 1960, with the brief exception of some taffy-textured computer animation, are arguably an improvement over the higher-tech, up-to-the-minute Hollywood ones. And our too-close-for-comfort first sight of Godzilla, using a boat for a toothpick, as well as subsequent sights of him lumbering toward and around Tokyo, can pass without apology on any count. The even nastier monster designed to make Godzilla look like Rocky Balboa -- a giant underwater meteorite that mutates into a flying inverted bedpan and then into an ambulatory steaming cowpie -- could do with a lot of apology. But the whole silly business is quite palatable in the spirit of happy-go-lucky schlock in which it is offered. Directed by Takao Okawara. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd
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