Section B·Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, June 3, 1998
Cars in front of New York City's Grand Central Terminal are poised to be flattened as Godzilla puts his foot down. Contrib
ured Photo.
Movie Review
Godzilla is a towering turkey
By Jeremy M. Doherty Kansan movie critic
The first scene in the new version of Godzilla reveals just how little imagination was placed in its script. Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) cruises down a bumpy
Even renegade cameraman Animal (Hank Azaria) cannot hide his shock and horror when he comes toe-to-toe with Godzilla in the TriStar Pictures presentation. Contributed Photo
road in a jeep, listening to a portable CD player. He passes by a large sign that reads "Chernobyl."
At this point, most of the audience will have called to mind images of a nuclear fallout, destruction of nature and other results of that disaster. For a brief second, director Roland Emmerich evokes a disquieting sense of an impending apocalypse.
And then he blows it.
Barely a second after Broderick passes the sign, Emmerich flashes one of those handy-dandy subtitles on the screen. It reads, "Chernovl."
Unfortunately, things do not improve much from there. The rest of this hugely expensive reworking of the Japanese-created monster relies upon clichés and stock characters.
So, how is the monster? Frankly, the big guy, despite receiving a computer-generated overhaul, resembles nothing so much as a T-Rex on steroids. Basically, the situation here is that the mutated Zilla swims from Tokyo to New York to lay his eggs. The military calls in Broderick because he studied mutated worms at Chernobyl, and they assume that qualifies him to theorize about what makes this big fella tick.
MOVIE REVIEW
(half-star out of four)
**Running time:** 2 hours, 20 minutes
Rated PG-13 for disaster-related violence
Kansan Rating: 1/2* out of *****
(half-star out of four)
Before long, the Big Apple is in shambles, with the 30-story iguanaa jogging down crowded city streets, leveling buildings and doing other tourist-type stuff. Between gaping at the lizard and arguing with the Army brass, Broderick finds time to sweet-talk his college sweetie, give Godzilla a pregnancy test and make friends with some French secret agents.
All this recycling of better movies might have been bearable if Emmerich and his writing partner Dean Devlin had attacked their material with some attitude. *Titanic* proved that audiences get tired of endless special effects at the expense of any sort of emotional wallop.
Godzilla could have been great cheesy fun. Instead, it's a perfect testament to all that is wrong with Hollywood today. It would be hard to watch this movie and not come away believing that Emmerich and Devlin held nothing but absolute contempt for our intelligence.
Movie Review
Fear and Loathing gives senses a trip
By Jeremy M. Doherty Kanson movie critic
"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold."
With those words spoken by Johnny Depp's character, Terry Gilliam's *Fear and Loathing* in Las Vegas sets off at full-throttle, blasting the senses with the mind-twisting horror show that is drug abuse.
Johnny Depp stars as journalist Raoul Duke in the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The movie, directed by Terry Gilliam, is based on Hunter S. Thompson's novel. Contributed Photo
Aside from being the best movie 1998 has yet offered, *Fear and Lothing* is a subversely engrossing road flick that takes a caustic, damm-the-torpedoes stance against the idealism and optimism of the free-loving 1960s.
This is a movie that thrives on excess, screaming "Wake up!" at anyone who shuffles through life in the center lane. Such extremism is bound to vex more than a few. There will continue to be claims that both Gilliam's film and the Hunter S. Thompson book on which it is based glorify the exploits of its coke-snorting and acid-dropping protagonists.
At a glance, the claims appear to have merit. When journalist Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp) and his attorney Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro), both zoned-out on ether, crash a Debbie Reynolds floorshow, the viewer gets an irresistible kick from their mocking of authority.
Del Toro, who thus far has played off his good looks in movies such as The Usual Sus
pects, virtually disappears into the sagging beer belly of Gonzo. Screeching out the lyrics to One Toke over the Line in one scene or threatening suicide while on an LSD binge in another, Gonzo emerges as a man whose scatter-brained nature disguises a frightening penchant for violence.
Sent by Rolling Stone magazine to cover a motorcycle race in the deserts of Las Vegas, Duke sees the situation as a chance to gorge himself on the glamour and tackiness of the Las Vegas Strip.
Played by Depp, Duke becomes a motor-mouthed prophet in beach shorts. He is a man so consumed by his hatred of normalcy that he is ready to destroy his brilliant mind in search of the American Dream.
The third star of the film is undoubtedly its director, Gilliam. After dismal movies such as Twelve Monkeys and The Fisher King, he finally returns to the eye-popping audacity that marked his 1985 film, Brazil.
With the neon-drenched, carnival atmosphere of Vegas as a backdrop to his heroes' capers, Gilliam allows us to cheer them on with a carefree, who-cares approach.
What makes this a great film is
MOVIE REVIEW
Kansan Rating: **** out of ***** (four out of four)
Running time: two hours
Rated R for its graphic depiction of drug abuse, strong language and violence.
that Gilliam does not deliver a politically-correct film that preaches the dangers of drug abuse without getting the audience inside that chemical-driven world.
Gilliam's too smart for that. He provides the laughter, and, true to his movie's title, the fear and the loathing. The result is an unforgettable cinematic trip that gives users and npn-users alike a glimpse into a bleak existence.
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