Monster Fail

Rating: 6/10 (9 November 2014)

I had to do something else less important so decided to watch this with half an eye to save time. Even that was a waste of time as I got nothing from it at all in nearly two hours. They spent USD 160 million to make a poorly executed, grimy coloured, dark and hopelessly inadequate b film and made a profit! And some highly paid film critics actually praised this – all I wonder now is how much they got paid for their misleading recommendations. The only good thing is it kept a lot of talented people in a job, including the highly paid critics too I suppose.
It starts fairly well as a Close Encounters rip-off, a man and his son trying to get into nuclear power station the brass hats have put out of bounds claiming ridiculous radiation poisoning for some lying inexplicable reason. They're soon let into the secret as the secret breaks loose. The remaining ninety minutes drag by in grimy darkness, with admittedly great sporadic cgi cartoonery – although there were far more stretches of dark with only farty noises which reminded me of the great Fred The Oyster and other sound effects from the Goon Show. Apart from periods of incoherent messiness the character, monster and plot development was nil; at least in the original Godzilla everybody and everything was cardboard and more real. My own favourite was Godzilla vs King Kong, what was yours? This sentimental-macho techno-hokum may be pleasing to the psyche of modern Japanese viewers but personally bring back The Prince Of Space or The Neptune Men anyday.
Did I mention the dark griminess, only broken by the depressing dysentery green of everything? John Wayne made Iwo Jima look like Paradise compared to this non-splendid vision. It's probably the worst film I've half-seen for ages, doesn't do what it says on the tin, and may leave you with eye-strain.