Pun Salad

It could be that I'm growing up. ("About time!" — Mrs. Salad) But I was prepared to have a rockin' good time watching this big-budget resurrection of everyone's favorite Japanese nuclear-powered monster. But instead, meh.

It turns out the movie really should have been titled Godzilla vs. the MUTOs. MUTO == Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism. There are two, boy and girl, initially discovered in pods, in the Philippines by a mining operation in 1999. The boy MUTO travels to Japan to destroy a nuclear reactor and go into a 15-year hibernation. The girl MUTO remains empodded and is toted off to Yucca Flats Nevada, since she's also radioactive.

There are people, too. Sandra Brody (Juliette Binoche) is married to Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) and have young son Ford. Sandra and Joe work at the doomed nuke; Sandra perishes heroically during the MUTO's attack.

Flash forward to the present day: Ford is all grown up, and Joe has turned into an Ahab-like obsessive trying to pierce the government coverup of the disaster. Ford arrives in Japan just in time for the reawakening of the boy MUTO, which (of course) wreaks more havoc, bumping off Joe. It then sets off toward America to reunite with the female.

Then Godzilla shows up, because he really doesn't like MUTOs; he's relatively benevolent toward people, even though they have a history of trying to kill him. The three monsters also take in the tourist sights, destroying Honolulu and Las Vegas on their way to rendezvous in San Francisco.

Well, that's enough plot. The overall themes are: incompetence of the Japanese and American governments and armed forces; also, nukes are bad. Most of the action takes place in the dark, which makes it difficult, at least on home video, to discern what's going on. Some of the special effects are impressive, but three stars are generous.

That spooky Ligeti music from 2001 is employed at one point, but the monolith doesn't show up.