(…I wonder how many of those fake Kangol hats Matthew went through during filming….)
It’s like the new Godzilla movie was made to make us forget about the Matthew Broderick one from 1998. Why Matthew Broderick? Did they see him in The Cable Guy and go, “THERE’S OUR GUY!”
Rifftrax is currently funding a Kickstarter to get the rights to the “Broderick Godzilla” to make fun of it…and yes, they refer to it as, “The one with Matthew Broderick.” :
Thanks to you, we had a hugely successful Kickstarter last year that funded us to be able to riff STARSHIP TROOPERS live in 700 theaters across North America. The show was a success, and this year we have the opportunity to perform a live riff of one of ourmost requested movies ever – GODZILLA! Yes, the 1998 version with Matthew Broderick!
Matthew really needs to give them a buck. He needs to own up to his bad 1990s movies.
I have never sat through Godzilla. I don’t think I could handle being bored to death. I did sit through the big scene on YouTube where Matthew chases Godzilla trough NYC and there’s something to do with a sewer and its raining, and he’s wearing that dumb hat? Beth from News Radio was in the movie too, and so is Hank Azaria, which is a real shame. He is a legend, and he was in this junk fest. He’s given us so many Simpsons characters, and he was in … this. Harry Shearer from Simpsons was in it too! Did they just get people from whatever was on TV that week they were hiring?
I’m using the rest of entry to focus on the awesomely bad reviews of the movie.
Ted Anthony, Associated Press:
1
Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
2.
Diane Lacey Allen, Lakeland Ledger:
3,
Joe Baltake, Scripps-McClatchy Western Service:
4.
Roger Ebert:
How, for example, does a 300-foot-tall creature fit inside a subway tunnel? How come it’s sometimes only as tall as the tunnel, and at other times taller than high-rise office buildings? How big is it, anyway? Why can it breathe fire but hardly ever makes use of this ability? Why, when the heroes hide inside the Park Avenue tunnel, is this tunnel too small for Godzilla to enter, even though it is larger than a subway tunnel? And why doesn’t Godzilla just snort some flames down there and broil them? Most monster movies have at least one bleeding-heart environmentalist to argue the case of the monstrous beast, but here we get only Niko Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick), an expert on the mutant earthworms of Chernobyl, who seems less like a scientist than like a place-holder waiting for a rewrite (“insert more interesting character here”). It is he who intuits that Godzilla is a female. (You would think that if a 300-foot monster were male, that would be hard to miss, but never mind.)
[…]
Oh, and then there are New York’s Mayor Ebert (gamely played byMichael Lerner) and his adviser, Gene (Lorry Goldman). The mayor of course makes every possible wrong decision (he is against evacuating Manhattan, etc.), and the adviser eventually gives thumbs-down to his reelection campaign. These characters are a reaction by Emmerich and Devlin to negative Siskel and Ebert reviews of their earlier movies (“Stargate,” “Independence Day”), but they let us off lightly; I fully expected to be squished like a bug by Godzilla. Now that I’ve inspired a character in a Godzilla movie, all I really still desire is for several Ingmar Bergman characters to sit in a circle and read my reviews to one another in hushed tones. 5
Gene Siskel:
In one bit of dialogue, we are told, as Godzilla trashes Manhattan, that looters have emptied out the Disney and Warner Bros. stores on 57th Street. But we never see that happen, thus blowing a naturally comic sequence – Godzilla mauling assorted plush toys.
[…]
In a form of myopic revenge, producer/co-writer Dean Devlin has included a hackneyed couple of characters, New York Mayor Ebert and sidekick Gene, because he told USA Today that the critics haven’t liked his previous work. I’m not amused, and the reference seems petty within the context of this huge enterprise. 6
Siskel & Ebert on Godzilla in their worst of 1998 special.
Mark Caro, Chicago Tribune:
. The media manipulation surrounding its opening can be no coincidence. First, the 139-minute movie’s first screening for critics was scheduled for 9 p.m. Monday, which pushes certain newspapers (including this one) to the deadline brink to get a review into a features section on Wednesday.
Then with days’ notice, Tri-Star moved the opening from Wednesday to Tuesday night, meaning that either the public could run out to the theaters with no advance word–just as they could for other not-screened movies like “Species II” and Carrot Top’s “Chairman of the Board”–or newspapers would scramble to get in a last-minute review. (The Tribune was able to run a Tuesday review because Los Angeles-based staff writer Gary Dretzka had seen an industry screening before Monday.)
Rushed reviews would work to the studio’s advantage if: 1) writers are composing while coming down from the movie’s adrenaline rush (too bad “Godzilla” becomes stupefyingly boring), and 2) they don’t have time to think of all the Mothra-sized holes in the plot. Like:
Why is Godzilla fast enough to duck missiles shot from airplanes and submarines yet unable to catch up to humans in a taxi or hoofing it?
Could humans really fend off these oversized lizards by slamming doors in their faces and, in one case, tying a fire hose around the handles?
If you were using a mountain of fish to lure Godzilla into a trap, would you place it in the middle of Manhattan, where each monster step and tail sweep causes massive destruction, instead of, say, by the water?
Scientific explanation aside, are we really supposed to buy that a home pregnancy test would work on a genetically mutated lizard?
Why, oh why, do they keep firing guns at him?
[…]
Here’s a sampling of what characters say before they bite it:
“I think we got him.”
“I think I lost him.”
I think that’s a good wrapup on the awful reviews for this movie. I do however, have a special bonus: the poorly recorded monologue when Matthew was on SNL promoting Godzilla! I recorded it off my screen those 3 days I had Hulu Plus when I was writing the SNL Fashion Show entry last year.
(ha, when I opened up YouTube to upload these, I got an ad for the new Godzilla movie)
//edit, November 7, 2014//
Everything Wrong With Godzilla In 7 Minutes Or Less by CinemaSins
//edit, March 31, 2016//
How Did This Get Made? Podcast on Godzilla.
1. Anthony, Ted. “‘Godzilla’: Big Movie Has Little Soul.”Observer-Reporter, May 20, 1998. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=d2teAAAAIBAJ&sjid=cGENAAAAIBAJ&pg=1440,2335018 (accessed May 15, 2014).
2. Norman, Tony. “’Godzilla’ is another case of the bigger they come…." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 20, 1998. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19980520&id=IIRIAAAAIBAJ&sjid=O28DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6803,6705441 (accessed May 15, 2014).
3. Allen, Diane Lacey. "Area Movie-Goers Love That Big Lizard." Lakeland Ledger, May 22, 1998. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&dat=19980522&id=y09IAAAAIBAJ&sjid=NP0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=2820,1178718 (accessed May 15, 2014).
4. Baltake, Joe. "It’s Godzilla–over and over again.”Lewiston Morning Tribute, May 22, 1998. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=yKteAAAAIBAJ&sjid=tS4MAAAAIBAJ&pg=2821,1758030 (accessed May 15, 2014).
5. Ebert, Roger. rogerebert.com, “Godzilla Movie Review & Film Summary (1998) | Roger Ebert.” Last modified May 26, 1998. Accessed May 16, 2014. http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/godzilla-1998.
6. Siskel, Gene. “`Godzilla’ Scores Low On Scare Scale.”Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1998. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1998-05-29/entertainment/9805290144_1_godzilla-jay-billington-bulworth-hollywood-hairdresser (accessed May 16, 2014).
7. Caro, Mark. “If Size Matters, `Godzilla’ Is Really A Monster." Chicago Tribune, May 20, 1998. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1998-05-20/features/9805200039_1_godzilla-roland-emmerich-and-producer-movie (accessed May 16, 2014).
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