Godzilla II: King Of The Monsters (2019)

The Low-Down: With Marvel raking in the cash and plaudits after creating the world’s most epic cinematic universe, every studio that can thread movies together – however tenuously – is hopping on the bandwagon. And so we have Godzilla II: King Of The Monsters: the third installment in Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse, following Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island (2017). It’s easily the most ambitious film yet, uniting several classic critters straight out of Godzilla lore and finding pretty much any excuse to have them fight one another. The final result is both bold and bonkers – good and bad, often in the very same moment.

The Story: Monsters break stuff, including people. It’s a fact of life that the broken Russell family must deal with after Godzilla’s epic battle leaves downtown San Francisco in ruins. Grieving and newly sober, Mark (Kyle Chandler) stalks wolf packs in another part of the world. Emma (Vera Farmiga), his ex-wife, continues to work on the Orca, a machine they created together that can emit soundwaves capable of calming or infuriating Godzilla-scale monsters. Madison (Millie Bobby Brown), their precocious daughter, is caught in between – especially when Emma’s decision to use the Orca sets off a chain of monstrous events that could lead to the end of the world as we know it.

The Good: The concept at the heart of Godzilla II, quite frankly, is off-the-wall wacky – so bold and audacious and weird that you have to give director/co-screenwriter Michael Dougherty some credit for effort, even if his execution of it is somewhat lacklustre. This is no mere story of monsters raining mayhem down upon mankind. Instead, the film moves its mythology quite firmly into the realm of faith; Godzilla, the film suggests, is as much god as monster. It’s actually quite remarkable to see a mainstream blockbuster movie embrace – rather than shy away from – religious iconography, folding in theologies and environmental philosophies from Greek myth to Thanos. As such, Godzilla and his arch-nemesis, King Ghidorah (a three-headed Hydra-esque dragon beast), aren’t just having their version of a bar-room brawl – their earth-shaking clash is a battle for the survival of humanity.

The Not-So-Good: It’s a shame that the film as a whole can’t keep up with its high-concept ideas. The writing ranges from inspired to insipid, with character motivations dancing ridiculously back and forth – dictated mostly by the rather demented plot. As a director, Dougherty exhibited some skill with subversive comedy in cult horror flick Krampus, but very little of that is evident here. It’s not just about sacrificing soul for scale – Dougherty occasionally struggles with telling such a massive story in visual terms. Some of the film’s action sequences are so choppy as to be downright confusing. It doesn’t help that Dougherty’s preferred aesthetic tends towards the grey and grim, which makes it even harder to figure out just what is going on while monsters are duking it out in frustratingly murky lighting.

The Monster Mash: The first Godzilla film in the franchise suffered for shoving its titular monster into the background, having him play second fiddle to human characters who weren’t all that well-written to begin with. Godzilla II tries to rectify that, somewhat, by flinging so many monsters at the screen that you’d be almost glad to get back to the human drama after a while. Apart from Godzilla and Ghidorah, fans will be glad to see old-school Toho favourites like Mothra and Rodan in action too. (If they could actually see them, that is. Seriously – the monsters are beautifully rendered, but the bruise-toned lighting does them no favours.)

God(zilla)-Level Casting: If Dougherty learned one thing from his predecessor, Gareth Edwards, it’s the importance of casting a bunch of top-notch character actors in an otherwise barmy creature feature. Veteran performers like Oscar nominee Farmiga, West Wing alumnus Whitford and Charles Dance (that’s Tywin Lannister to you) reel off awkward exposition and pseudo-scientific claptrap (“bio-acoustics”, “the Oxygen Destroyer”) like it’s actual real human dialogue. It’s quite remarkable to see Friday Night Lights’ Coach Eric Taylor in action anti-hero mode, but Chandler – just as Bryan Cranston did in the 2014 film – brings an everyman weight to a character whose narrative arc is muddled, to say the least. The MVP here, though, is Brown. She brings to Madison the same soulful blend of toughness and tenderness that made her such a breakout star in Netflix’s Stranger Things.

Recommended? It depends. Godzilla II is a hot mess… but it’s a fascinating hot mess, and surprisingly fun to watch and even think about.

Justin And The Knights Of Valour (2013)

It’s a brave, brave thing to make animated movies in a field dominated by the likes of Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks, Fox, Sony – the list of big-name studios with clout, money and global reach goes on and on. And yet, animators in Spain are soldiering along undeterred. Their films are even being produced in the English language, first and foremost, to ensure they have global rather than merely local appeal. Following on the heels of the inoffensive but not particularly good Tad The Lost Explorer comes Justin And The Knights Of Valour, which is a better, funnier effort all around, although there’s a long way to go yet before Hollywood should be looking over its shoulder in fear.

Justin (voiced by Freddie Highmore) just wants to be a knight of the realm – which is a problem since knights have been banned by legal fiat, in a law drawn up by the Queen (Olivia Williams) and the kingdom’s top lawyer Reginald (Alfred Molina)… who happens to be Justin’s dad. Fuelled by stories of his grandfather’s derring-do and determined to prove himself worthy of the affections of his wealthy crush Lara (Tamsin Egerton), Justin embarks on a quest to become a knight himself. Trained by a trio of monks ranging from deadpan (Legantir/Charles Dance) to barmy (Braulio/Barry Humphries) to mentor (Blucher/James Cosmo), Justin sets out to save the kingdom from the evil designs of deposed knight Sir Heraclio (Mark Strong).

If that sounds over-complicated and over-populated, that’s because it is. There’s even Melquiades (David Walliams), a schizophrenic wizard who might be the greatest soothsayer in the land – or a complete madman, and feisty barmaid Talia (Saoirse Ronan), who’s evidently a better match for Justin than Lara. The film also has an odd relationship with the rule of law – many another film has portrayed lawyers as the lowest of the low, but Justin goes one further, implying that rules and regulations are better broken as long as one can live by one’s own moral code of… well, valour. That’s a problematic assumption at the best of times, particularly since Heraclio is a surprisingly effective villain precisely because he believes himself to be avenging his own way of life and livelihood.

Get over the bumpier parts of the script, however, and Justin can actually be a lot of fun. It’s a feisty, scrappy film that throws in odd but welcome bursts of humour, whether it’s a flying crocodile (the look of which is surely filched from Peter Pan‘s iconic ticking reptile), a completely bonkers wizard, or a slew of hilarious hit-and-run comic characters like Lara, the preening Sir Clorex (Antonio Banderas) and Heraclio’s smarmy, slimy accomplice Sota (Rupert Everett). Justin’s tender relationship with the caring Blucher works well, certainly more so than his far too simple rebellion against the well-meaning efforts of his unfortunate dad. Talia, too, is a good role model for girls who’s well able to handle herself apart from Justin.

All in all, Justin just about squeaks by as an amiable effort. It’s not great and only occasionally approaches good, but it’s watchable and funny enough for kids. At this point, Hollywood really has no need to trouble itself just yet. But, if these Spanish efforts keep at it, they might prove to be true, valiant competition sometime in the future.

Basically: A valiant attempt, but one that still falls short of the mark.

Ali G Indahouse – The Movie (2002)

With the recent Borat seeing absurdist comedian extraordinaire Sacha Baron Cohen hailed as the brightest shining comedic star of his generation, I thought it would be instructive to watch Ali G Indahouse – a rather older movie featuring his first and seminal alter ego, Ali G – to see how well-deserved that reputation is. Like Cohen stablemate, anti-Semitic Kazakhstani pseudo-journalist Borat, Ali G is a character built entirely on stereotype (in this case, a white boy living as if he were a card-carrying member of America’s black, hiphop and ghetto culture), who is subsequently introduced into real-life situations and expected to interact with real people. The comedy, at least when Cohen, as Ali G, anchored a couple of outrageous television series in the UK and the US, came from the thoroughly flummoxed reactions of ordinary folks (and some not-so-ordinary folks, like clueless British politicians caught in an interview with a horrifyingly irreverent Ali G) to this comic creation… especially as, to all intents and purposes, these hapless interviewees believe that they’re dealing with a real person.

This was the same approach, give or take a few creative liberties, that informed the filming of Borat. AGI, however, eschews this method – presumably because Ali G had become such a household name by the time the movie was filmed (in 2002) that it was impossible for Cohen to star in a movie in the UK based on the same premise. Consequently, Cohen, with his writing partner Dan Mazer, concocted a ludicrous storyline to bring Ali G to the big screen. And yes, it’s appropriately mental: upset that his local leisure centre in the West Side of Staines has lost its funding, Ali G agrees to a proposal from DPM and Chancellor of the Exchequer David Carlton (Charles Dance) to become the MP for Staines. Carlton, of course, only plans to bring Ali G into the party, and eventually the Cabinet, to undermine the Prime Minister (Michael Gambon) such that he can take over the reins of leadership when the genuinely, remarkably stupid Ali G has completely screwed everything up. Of course, the movie wouldn’t exist if this actually happened – instead of ballsing it all up, Ali G, predictably, becomes the PM’s right-hand man through a series of ridiculously apt policy suggestions… until an impatient Carlton finally engineers a plot to have both the PM and Ali G removed from office in scandal and disgrace. Can Ali G, along with his pals Ricky C (Martin Freeman) and the latter’s girlfriend Julie (Kellie Bright), unite the ghetto gangstas of Staines to put an end to Carlton’s dastardly plans?

Bear in mind that the synopsis above makes the movie sound surprisingly lucid. There is a plot, and AGI does, for the most part, pay lip service to it. But story really is the least of the movie’s concerns: the goal here really is to glory in the wacky hijinks and crazy sensibility that informs the whole of Ali G’s utterly bizarre world. That this is not a movie that gives two hoots about being rooted in reality is clear from an opening sequence featuring an LA-based shootout between rival gang members: as they take fire at the heroic Ali G, after he’s just danced through a hail of bullets to save a young boy, all they manage to do is sketch out an outline of Ali G in bullets against the wall… an outline with an inexplicably large penis. This, of course, is a dream sequence – but when Ali G wakes up, the movie doesn’t become anywhere more recognisably realistic, as he meets up with his similarly deluded posse of white-boys-aspiring-to-be-blacker-than-black or goes on a misguided hunger strike (lasting about two minutes!) to protest the shutting down of the leisure centre. Ali G’s meteoric rise up the British political ladder is equal parts ludicrous and hilarious, as he suggests doing away with math in school (except where it helps kids figure out complicated drug deals), or he moves to get a batch of the world’s greatest political leaders high (providing a uniquely… um, gay solution to a mysterious international crisis between Chad and Burkino Faso that would have otherwise seen a huge clash of superpowers in a bloody war).

Realism is, obviously, the last thing you should expect when approaching AGI. However, if you go in hoping for either a pastiche of his best hits from his television series or a completely ribald, tasteless comedy that features cock/fart/shit jokes galore, you’ll be completely tickled by what you’ll see. Because you get both. One of the joys here is to delight in Ali G’s quirks and sheer, boneheaded stupidity – whether he’s dreaming of hot, half-naked babes whenever he shuts his eyes, tossing off another off-hand chauvinistic remark (“Dat’s no prozzie, dat’s me ho!”), or simply spouting nonsense (“R.E.S.T.E.C.P! Do ya even know wha it spellz?”). The lowbrow comedy zings at every opportunity, spilling over in tiny, throwaway moments (Ali G ensuring that his stick figure has a huge dong when he draws a rudimentary sketch of his plan to thwart Carlton) or in extended sequences (Ali G’s first, excruciating meeting with Carlton, in which his inanity convinces the latter that Ali G is most definitely the man to represent Staines and bring down the reigning PM). Everything that goes on is meant to be completely, totally absurd… which does suggest, to me at least, that Cohen is indeed carrying forth the Monty Python tradition, albeit in a deliberately non-intellectual fashion.

The biggest problem with this movie, actually, is simply that it has had to give up on what fundamentally made Ali G so memorable as a character i.e., the fact that the audience knew that he was a completely made-up bonehead who was actually talking and interacting with people who had no idea that he was a total fabrication and didn’t exist. Borat managed to work that magic. AGI, however, flounders because Cohen has had to leave this approach by the wayside with Ali G’s increasing popularity (not to mention his lingo permeating British culture at the time) and consequently has had to present Ali G as a real character in a real movie with a real plot. However much comedy gold he manages to mine from this situation (and even then some of it is more miss than hit), the movie simply becomes another one of those recklessly, vapidly gross-out movies that has very little to say in terms of satire or human nature. (Unlike Borat or Da Ali G Show, both of which say more about people and the way they look at and deal with others through their unique brand of comedy than I suspect many properly academic sociology textbooks do.) AGI becomes considerably more forgettable as a result, whether or not you do (and you probably would) take away with you individually outrageous scenes like the dorky Freeman apparently hard at work (ha ha!) boning another man, or Carlton’s final appearance in the second ending of the movie.

If this review hasn’t yet made it abundantly clear, AGI absolutely is not for everyone. If you’re already a fan, you’ll find this a fun, unbelievably rude, crazy laugh-out-loud experience, although the lack of real people for this movie’s Ali G to interact with proves rather more disappointing than you’d expect. You’ll also get a kick out of Cohen’s always excellent, thoroughly committed performance and seeing the deadpan Freeman big it up and keeping it real as Ricky C. If you’re not a fan, you’ll likely wring a few laughs out of this, but are unlikely to become a convert anytime soon. Is Cohen a genius? Well, for his original concept behind the character of Ali G, sure. For his dedication to creating this character and others beside, including Borat (who cameos in this film!), yes. But for this movie in particular? The answer is probably no.