He's big, he's bad, and he's coming to town!

Godzilla Rated PG-13 Starring Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria Directed by Roland Emmerich TriStar Pictures 138 minutes

Japanese fishing boat is destroyed at sea, and young scientist Dr. Nick Tatopoulos (Broderick) is summoned by the U.S. military to investigate. After being shown a trail of enormous footprints on a remote island, Nick deduces the bizarre truth: a lizard, mutated to enormous proportions by nuclear testing, is heading for New York.

Godzilla soon arrives in the Big Apple, throwing the city into turmoil. But Audrey (Patillo)--a spunky wanna-be news reporter who also happens to be Nick's former sweetheart--sees this as her chance to get the story of a lifetime. Aided by her gung-ho cameraman (Azaria), she's hot on the heels of the army...whose tanks are, in turn, hot on the giant heels of Godzilla.

Leaving crushed cabs and skyscrapers in its wake, the enormous lizard leads army helicopters on a destructive chase through the city. But the human troops are no match for the animal. And though it's as big as a building, Godzilla is also quick enough to ditch the pursuing 'copters and disappear beneath Manhattan.

Between the monstrous confrontations, Nick uses a home pregnancy kit to test the beast's blood, revealing that Godzilla's both a he and a she...and it's about to lay eggs!

Unfortunately, ambitious Audrey releases Nick's findings to the press, getting him fired. So Nick joins up with a secret team of French commandos, (led by French star Jean Reno), in an attempt to track down Godzilla's nest.

Hoping to prove Nick's theory to the world and win back his love, Audrey pursues Nick and the commandos...who discover far more than even Nick had imagined!

The bigger they come...

Godzilla is a very confusing phenomenon. It has all the elements for a satisfying SF/action film: a huge monster, a huge budget, great CGI effects, the ever-charming Matthew Broderick, and the ID4 team of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich at the helm.

Unfortunately, Godzilla fails to live up to the hype.

Whereas Independence Day was a heartwarming, patriotic adventure, Godzilla lacks three-dimensional characters, real emotions, or a monster viewers can believe in. It's also amazingly derivative of such recent monster movies as Jurassic Park and The Lost World, but without any of the Spielbergian style or charm.

After a promising opening credit sequence, the film quickly devolves into a one-liner-filled yukfest, populated by characters who viewers can neither rally behind nor sympathize with. Godzilla's capable cast members are reduced to silly buffoons who dash about without much rhyme, reason or intelligent thought, devising "plans" that are questionable at best.

But besides the one-dimensional caricatures, the dull one-liners, and the lack of originality or emotion, probably the biggest disappointment is Godzilla itself. Unlike the wonderful Ray Harryhausen creatures it so desperately wants to emulate, Godzilla lacks character. Viewers are never let into the beast's enormous skull and can therefore never really relate to the monster; a necessity for successful creature features.

It's been a long time since I've been so excited to see a movie, and so thoroughly disappointed by what I saw. TriStar's ultra-hype marketing plan will surely suck crowds into the theaters in the initial weeks, but I believe bad word-of-mouth will prove a much more destructive force than even the biggest of lizards. -- J.P.

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A cautionary tale about the proper disposal of toxic waste, or a perspective on a real nuclear family?

Gargantua Starring Adam Baldwin, Julie Carmen, Bobby Hosea Directed by Bradford May Fox Tuesday, May 19 8:00-10:00 p.m.

ith a research grant, a fishing hat and his adolescent son Brandon, Dr. Jack Elway (Baldwin) treks to the remote, tiny island nation of Mulaui in the south Pacific. Ostensibly he is there to observe the effects of recent abyssal earthquakes on marine life, but he is soon drawn to investigate something more scientifically tantalizing.

A couple of vacationers have met mysterious deaths along the beach. Elway and a colleague, an elder statesman of marine science, grow suspicious that a large heretofore unknown creature is behind the deaths. The beaches are closed down as they search, and at the high point of the hubbub, Elway peremptorily dismisses his son, who has something to discuss with him. It's too bad for Elway, for Brandon wants to talk about the baby he's befriended, a baby creature about four feet long, seemingly a cross between a dinosaur and a salamander.

The next evening, as Elway ponders the nature of the creature, the thing attacks a beach party. The team gives chase, corners it, and plugs it full of tranquilizer. Flush with success, the scientists prepare to transport the toothy, robust, nine-foot-long creature (which is apparently a mutant produced by toxic chemicals stored in the seabed) back to an institute for study. But a local guide/fisherman and his crew see the animal novelty as a gold mine. They try to steal it to sell it to the highest bidder, but the creature escapes. Faced with a bloody tourist season, the local government calls in the military.

But neither scientists nor soldiers nor fisherfolk reckoned that the nine-foot monstrosity had a 30-foot mother. And a father.

This ain't Gorgo

It is hard to enjoy Gargantua on any level. The writing is poor (the script seems more like a screenplay pitch than a developed work), the plot threadbare (it's a dumbed-down version of Gorgo with the rest of the nuclear monster family--sort of an amphibious Nelson unit), and the special effects tepid (Harryhausen could do more with Play-Doh than these folks do with CGI and latex). The only perverse treat is the ludicrous physical appearance of the monsters, which are so cheesy as to make viewers wonder if this film is a promotional vehicle for the Wisconsin Dairy Council.

There is also no emotional bonding. Jack Elway is just an annoying guy with neat, white teeth and beautiful skin. His son's character seems like he could be the least popular of the Goonies, and the creatures...well, Gorgo was more stylin'. There aren't even any worthwhile villains. In short, there is nothing to anchor the viewer's attention, which floats adrift for the entire two hours.

To the film's credit, and as a minor surprise, the president of the small island nation is logical, considered and intelligent. Quite the foil to all the hard-nosed, money-minded bureaucrats of other aquatic monster films who keep the beaches open until the waters are so red with blood that they have an Rh factor. But what begins as a refreshing approach to the monster-movie canon fades quickly, as the dramatic tension that the short-sighted bureaucrat archetype usually brings is replaced with neat white teeth.

This is a film that takes no artistic gambles; the only thing at risk here is the network's money. It is indeed hard to like this film, but, queerly, it is also hard to hate it, for it is so dull and inoffensive.

Just as an aside, the bipedal locomotion of the creatures was entirely questionable to me, as their anatomies showed them as splay-legged, rather than formed with their legs underneath them. Eh, picky, but it bugged me. -- Tamara

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In space, no one can hear you howl

Sleeping Dogs Starring Scott McNeil, C. Thomas Howell, Heather Hanson Directed by Michael Bafaro The Sci-Fi Channel Saturday, May 16 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET

n the Los Angeles of 2029, Harry Maxwell (McNeil) has his sights set on emeralds. Harry's a thief, and the emeralds he's after belong to one very nasty criminal named Sanchez Boon (Howell). Boon has already been sentenced to three life terms (the death penalty has been outlawed), and he's just killed a federal agent. When Harry breaks into Boon's building, his caper doesn't go quite as planned.

Harry first hooks up with Pandora Grimes (Hanson), a woman who is being forced to work for Boon and who also knows the combination to the safe where the emeralds are being held. Harry and Pandora manage to grab the emeralds, but on their way out they get caught in a shootout between Boon's henchmen and the police. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, they dive into a nearby cargo container for cover.

During the exchange the police finally manage to catch Boon, who is placed in stasis (a sleeping dog) along with other criminals and sent on his way to the Titan One Prison Colony. Harry and Pandora are also on the ship, trapped in the cargo container and now sharing the same hold as the prisoners.

When an asteroid crashes into the ship, Boon is set free. He awakens some fellow criminals to help take over the ship, including a cyborg (Ciara Hunter) and a psychopath (Paul Jarrett). It's then up to Harry and Pandora to come to the aid of the prison ship's crew and retake the vessel before Boon kills them all.

Let Sleeping Dogs lie

Sleeping Dogs is a tired retread that even unrelenting action can't keep from being boring. There is absolutely nothing new or original in this film, except the absurd lengths the filmmakers go to in order to get Harry, Pandora and Boon together on the prison ship.

Just as preposterous is the idea that these characters would throw an arsenal of weapons at each other on a spaceship, even a really big spaceship. They never worry about losing oxygen or blowing themselves up. Of course, why would the characters worry about anything like that? They live in a movie world where hundreds of bullets fly and only the extras get shot.

Besides the terrible script, the special effects consist mostly of explosions and way too much slow motion action. Beyond that, like a lot of low-budget science fiction movies, there's no interesting science fiction here. The filmmakers set the action in the future, throw in a space ship and call it SF. The audience never gets to see Los Angeles in 2029, or the Titan One Prison Colony.

So what's to recommend Sleeping Dogs? Nothing, except for some of the actors, who do their best to bring the movie to life. Howell chews up the scenery, Hanson does what she can in the girl role, Hunter makes a fairly convincing nasty cyborg, and Jarrett (as Willy Boy Pruitt) has some fun as a psychopath.

What really annoys me about Sleeping Dogs is that, with a little thought, it could have been so much better. -- Kathie

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