Not even bad in a good way

Nice effects though.

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Better Late Then Never

Seen at the Vienna International Film Festival in October 2009. - During a G8 summit Japan is attacked by a Godzilla-like monster from out of space and all the attendant heads of state decide to stay and help kill the monster, pretty much because they want to prove to the US-president that they aren't pussies. Utterly uncinematic, beyond silly and often boring. One element that reflects this is that although the heads of state are all named after the real people they bear close to no resemblance to them, neither visually nor otherwise, and instead are just amateurishly acted, cheap stereotyped representatives of their respective countries.One by one they come up with methods to kill the monster, resulting in one failure after another. It's like Coyote and Road Runner with a more powerful but also more incompetent Coyote; when the monster is down and defenseless, instead of covering it in bombs they wait until it recovers again to move on to the next plan. In the other plot line we have a female journalist who finds a small town near the G8 summit where the people "pray" to their monster god which will eventually defeat "Godzilla" in a fistfight. Overall the film dedicates about ten minutes to showing the forcefully silly dance of those people (their "praying"), which serves to materialize their god and save the world. Useless to say the film didn't have a single actual character. Everyone was just there to spout whatever unoriginal line the filmmakers could come up with and to finally SOMEHOW arrive with the plot at the inevitable conclusion.I found it to be bad and an unpleasant experience. The film got laughs from the audience, especially in the first five minutes, and continued to get laughs throughout, often with big gaps in between and never any big laughs. I assume much of it was the forced kind (many of them were drinking beer there, which needs to be considered as well). As for me I had a little laugh about every ten minutes. (There is the occasional apt and unexpected stereotype joke.) It wasn't all bad, it could have made an OK 20-minute film. The monster scenes with its destruction of the city are old-school Godzilla fare. In fact it's so old school and unoriginal that they might as well could have used footage from old Godzilla movies. Except that most of the time the monster just stands around acting exactly like Joe Cocker (no kidding). Such a thing can't be funny for long. Not for me anyway.But I'll be the first to admit that usually I don't much like B-movie comedies as they often turn out overly shallow and silly, so if you know you like that kind of thing don't let this user comment stop you.

Today I had the good fortune to catch the new "Monster X" flick on the big screen here in NYC. Although there could have been some more monster action, it definitely was not a disappointment.The original "X From Outer Space" from 1967 starred newcomer Guilala, a monster who looked so ridiculous, that there was no way they could have made this sequel anything but a comedy. At least I think it's a sequel - while the title indicates Guilala does indeed "strike back" after being beaten 42 years ago in the first movie, there is a scene here with a kid (who looks like he walked out of a 60's Gamera movie) who names the creature "Guilala," as if he was never named or seen before.As for the movie being a comedy, believe it or not, it's actually a decent comedy. Eight world leaders meet in japan for a summit, and take turns offering (failing) suggestions on how to kill Guilala. But the jokes aren't random - there's actually a lot of clever writing here. This isn't a movie full of dumb jokes.There's also two reporters (including a hot girl) try to uncover the secret of Guilala through an odd jungle cult, who do a strange dance to worship a god named Take-Majin, who they later convince through their dancing and chanting to fight Guilala.My main gripe is that there really isn't much destruction by Guilala. Actually, his best scenes come right at the beginning of the film, just minutes in - he lands on Earth, destroys some buildings and walks off. We then see Guilala fend off the occasional attempt to kill him, and of course his fight with Take-Majin, but the destruction ends right at the start.The special effects are pure 1960's retro, from the buildings to the fire that Guilala spews out of his mouth, to the cheap-looking costume. This was all obviously done on purpose to pay homage to the charm of the original film.Funny monster, pretty girls everywhere, and clever writing make "Monster X" a good bet for giant monster fans. And before the film, we had a 17-minute original giant monster comedy called "Gehara - The Long Haired Giant Monster" and a great preview of the new "Kappa" (Gappa) film coming out, and it won't be a comedy.

Send up/spoof of the Giant Monster movies of the 1960's is married to a political satire about the G8. A reporter and photographer are covering the G8 when Monster X (using what appears to be new footage and old footage from the dreadful 1960's film called monster X) comes from the sky and begins to attack Japan. the world leaders decide that instead of fleeing that they will stay and fight. 10 minute sketch stretched to almost 100 minutes is a film sunk by obvious jokes, poor performances (anyone speaking English is beyond bad) and a sense of dullness. I didn't like this at all, partly because it pales when compared to a film like Big Man Japan but mostly because its not very good...any good. This is one of those times when I'm glad I didn't pay 12 bucks to see a movie in a theater.

From time to time i like to immerse on films like this. Those are the moments in which one enters a film for pure relaxation. I guess it's the same kind of spirit such filmmakers as Kawasaki put into creating this.Some of these rides are actually very profitable, and i think it is a mistake to excuse every unconsidered element of a film just because it is a B-flick or because the budget was close to zero. Some great, intelligent work has been that over that.Here we have a film made out of two elements: the will to freely play with known faces of the political scene these days, and the will to produce special effects that deliberately looking false and old-fashioned. I think this crew must have had a lot of fun making this, and in certain moments i too enjoyed being there. But it is the kind of fun a group of adolescents has making fun of an unlikable teacher or painting obscene messages on a wall. I'm OK with that, but something better could be put into this. It was nice to be watching a Power Rangers kind of fight so many years later, but 'nice' is not good.You know what this is now. It's your choice to embrace it or not. I did it with some interest, but i won't do it again.The pace is slow, cinematic rhythm was not also in the mind of these folks.My opinion: 1/5 http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com