Good times!
I was surprised that they added a show at a suburban NY multiplex and the place was almost filled to the max. Got a round of applause at the end.
This flick was surprisingly, subtly weird and different from established things you do in the way a movie is made. It was a basic action movie, but really just like an anime in live action. The style of of directing and editing is straight out of anime: whip fast and snappy, with the wide-angle close-ups of faces, machine-gun rat-a-tat speech and expressionless faces and cartoonish reactions, wry deadpan lines. The director has a super distinct style and he clearly knew exactly what he wanted. I have to commend any director that does something different. I can't exactly call it original, but it's almost jarringly different, including the score, and I will pay ten bucks for that any day and twice on Sunday. Some bits from the original 1950s score were used to fantastic effect.
Hiroki Hasegawa (Mr. Overactor-face from Love & Peace) was just great in the lead. Hottie Satomi Ishihara, not so much, bless her heart, she was in over her head with the English. It's not so much as cast as a collection of pencil drawings.
There were a lot of flaws and weaknesses here, but I'm not inclined to pick at them. Way too many title cards and with the fast speech, the subtitle-reading is once again overwhelming. They should have spared a thought for international audiences when they planned to release it in 106 territories.
Overall, it's proportionally just as 'bad' as the original Godzilla movies were bad. But the director is not overshooting the originals and trying to do better -- he's trying to do "just as fun" with the intentional flat, one-dimensional characters crossed with a deeply wry and observant take on the bureaucratic reality of a monster invasion. Ironically, it only bogs down in the scenes with Godzilla and cgi, because that's when it starts to feel like any other action movie. But the pace is so damn snappy that these only last for seconds.
Not a great movie but worth $10 in the theater for the feeling of occasion. Eight point two for fun.
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