Like more than a few senior citizens’, Godzilla’s midsection now betrays what looks like some extra trips to the all-you-can-eat buffet at the early bird special (still strictly vegetarian in his case).
But the big guy demonstrates he’s still got the old mojo when he finally waddles out of the Pacific after an hour of sporadic action alternating with sub-Spielbergian family drama in Gareth Edwards’ prestigiously cast and satisfying reboot to mark the movie monster’s 60th anniversary.
Rest assured, Godzilla is more than up to the challenge of trying to save San Francisco from an infestation of what looked to me suspiciously like giant cockroaches on steroids.
The Navy would just as soon apply the nuclear version of DDT to the problem, but a Japanese scientist (Ken Watanabe) keeps urging the admiral in charge (David Straithairn) to let Godzilla “restore balance.”
It doesn’t hurt that the CGI colossus not only has a tail he isn’t at all reluctant to put to lethal use, but breath that can literally kill.
The second half of “Godzilla’’ is definitely more fun than the first part of a film I enjoyed overall, if less than last year’s similar dip into giant monster blockbusterdom, “Pacific Rim.”
The first hour of the new film introduces “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston, in the first of a series of amusing wigs, as a scientist who survives a disaster at a Japanese nuclear plant that has a predictably less fortunate outcome for his wife (Juliette Binoche).
Fifteen years later, even their son (a newly buffed Aaron Taylor-Johnson of “Kick-Ass’’), a Navy explosives expert, thinks the old man is nuts. That somehow doesn’t dissuade Junior from joining in a trip to their now-quarantined Japanese hometown, where the aforementioned cockroaches have been breeding in a top-secret international experiment.
It comes as no surprise when the roaches escape, nor when they turn up in Honolulu, where Taylor-Johnson is on a layover on the way back to nurse-wife Elizabeth Olsen (finally cashing in during what amounts to her 14th minute of fame) and their young son in San Francisco.
Taylor-Johnson is almost always in the wrong place at the wrong time, including on a monorail memorably set upon by the cockroaches in an homage to Godzilla’s one-time wrestling opponent, King Kong. (Director Edwards seems most influenced by “Jurassic Park.”)
Our human hero is MIA when the cockroaches level much of Las Vegas — I say good riddance to an overused location! — but is front and center when a couple of the giant roaches engage in mating rituals among the few Frisco skyscrapers still standing, prior to laying eggs in the subway system.
Even in 3-D, these human characters are barely one-dimensional, but in the end that doesn’t really matter very much. Edwards — a Brit whose only previous directing credit was the micro-budgeted “Monsters’’ — knows people don’t go to these kinds of movies to watch an international cast of Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning actors.
“Godzilla” climaxes in a welter of expertly staged monster-on-monster action that honors the memory of Ishiro Honda’s 1954 classic Godzilla debut (and its numerous sequels) far more effectively than did Roland Emmerich’s jokey 1998 reboot.
Here’s hoping that next time Warner Bros. will get the big old guy a reunion with Mothra. And I hear the other Olsen sisters are available to play the flying monster’s tiny singing companions.