The
Devil's Reviews

Godzilla 2000

A super-sized, atomic dinosaur smashing building and squashing anyone dumb enough to still hang out in Tokyo—gotta love that. And spraying his super-heated atomic breath, ah, that just brings back memories. I wonder if it has a sulfur smell. I’ve been a Godzilla fan from way back. The irony of the English spelling tickled me. Plus, well, I just can’t get enough of that fire breath. Reminds me of home.

In this outing, the big guy’s 24th and just one year after the flameless, big budget American version, a sentient alien spaceship wants Godzilla’s special regenerating cells. Oh, and it wants to take over the world. With those cells, it can morph into a giant, hunched over lizard-thing, because…well, I can’t think of a single reason. I have vast powers, and never once did I think, “Hey, I’ll make myself into a scaly creature with posture problems.” Opposing the shape-challenged extraterrestrial is some Japanese official from a crisis control office, who is unaware that most humans move, breath, and have facial expressions. Since neither he, nor his missiles have any effect, I’d forget about him, except he keeps popping up on screen. The other humans are a dim-witted scientist, his precocious daughter, and a reporter chick that has no sense of self preservation, or any other sense I could find. The scientist is the hero, which is unfortunate as he’s an idiot on a grand scale. He’s formed The Godzilla Prediction Network, with his daughter as the only other member. They lobby for the protection of Godzilla, because his mass slaughters are so cute. The reporter, who would be attractive if every word she said wasn’t so impressively inane, is striving to get a picture of Godzilla. Godzilla pops up all the time and ravages the country side. Doesn’t pretty much everyone have a picture of him?

OK, so the humans suck, but who watches a Godzilla flick for the people. It’s the monsters that count, and their destruction, and Godzilla 2000 delivers on burning cities. It has some of the best city crunching and monster combat in any daikaiju film. But that isn’t want makes it stand out. Yes, it is the monster on monster action, and I’m not talking about violence. Someone at Toho studios has a sense of humor, and while there is nothing, absolutely, positively, and completely nothing, sexually exciting in the film, the sexual symbolism is a riot. The diaphragm-shaped spaceship starts things off by settling on the tip of a phallic tower, which then blows its top. The saucer then transforms into a monster, which gets as close as it can to Godzilla and spreads its “jaws” to reveal its flower. Yes, it has a big flower inside, and that flower has a plentiful, moist hole. Godzilla, who has been doing as much spewing as he can manage, thrusts himself, head first, into the dark gaping slit, getting in just as far as he can, while the pedals of the flower suck on him, before he shoots, deep inside. Afterwards, we’ve got ourselves one satisfied creature. You just don’t spend a couple of million bucks on a monster/flower climax scene without knowing what you’re doing.

So, finally, not only can you see Godzilla bite, claw, and smash, but also get some.

Sins (What does this mean?)

Pride	Nothing.
Sloth	Nothing.
Avarice	Nothing.
Gluttony	Nothing.
Aesthetics	Only if you can find the beauty of a big rubber suit.
Surrogate Cruelty	Buildings smashed, people trampled, in a G-rated way.
Thought	Nothing.
Humor	It's a Godzilla movie—not to be taken seriously.
Lust	Symbolically anyway.  Hot lizard on flower action.