Going through the motions of a monster movie

Rating: 4/10 (15 May 2014)

There's plenty to love for fans of special effects and monster mayhem in general, but for those who want to see a good original story there's hardly anything there.
Technically it's a well made movie that navigates through all the necessary story beats for this kind of movie, but it lacks personality or soul. The characters aren't interesting or have much of a personality - they're basically just stereotypes instead of real people - and because of that it's really hard to care what happens to them and so the whole movie becomes uninteresting. The actors do plenty of emoting, looking teary eyed at each other or at the mayhem around them and there's lots of personal tragedy etc. but it all feels lifeless.
There's some impressive visuals in the movie especially near the end when Godzilla & co. really lets it loose, but sadly these gorgeous images are hollow because the story is lacking. The visual part of the movie is the only inspired part. The story just goes through the motions of a stereotypical monster movie with some themes of nature's balance or whatever thrown into the mix to justify the special effects.