One star. Rated PG-13, for relentlessly dumb and noisy sci-fi violence, and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang
Godzilla has a lot to answer for.
So does Guillermo del Toro,
basking in the reflected glow of the Academy Awards now resting on his mantel.
 |
| When an entire squadron of giant robots goes berserk, only a handful of cadets — notably Amara (Cailee Spaeny, and do note her wind-swept hair) and Jake (John Boyega) — are in a position to prevent Earth's complete annihilation. Can they succeed, against such overwhelming odds? Is there really any question? |
Because we must remember that he
brought us Pacific Rim, back in 2013.
And if that film hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t now be suffering through its
soulless, brain-dead sequel.
It’s important to note that del
Toro always has had an affinity for grandiose monster movies, which he
demonstrated with his two Hellboy
entries, and even as far back as 1997’s Mimic.
(Needless to say, The Shape of Water
also is a monster movie.) Del Toro has a knack for finding — and somehow making
credible — the emotional center of even the craziest premise; he also knows how
to add just the right amount of humor to a formula that requires an equally
precise blend of tragedy and triumph.
In short, we care about the characters in del Toro’s films, human or otherwise.
We get involved.
Nothing — and nobody — in Pacific Rim Uprising elicits even a
shred of interest. This isn’t a film; it’s a global commodity, assembled with
calculated coldness by corporate bean-counters ticking all the little boxes.
Multi-national characters? Check.
Disillusioned soldier who finds his inner hero? Check. Plucky young girl?
Check. Eye-rollingly dumb dialog intended to facilitate bonding? Check.
Jealousy in the ranks? Check. The destruction of vast cityscapes? Check.
First-time big-screen director
Steven S. DeKnight can demand — and obtain — the most whoppingly, prodigiously
colossal beasties and human-powered mechanical warriors that today’s
special-effects money can buy, but the result has no more emotional
significance than we got from watching two guys in rubber suits bash each
other, while striding amid the balsa-wood cities of 1960s Godzilla flicks.
The reason? This film’s script —
credited to DeKnight, Emily Carmichael, Kira Snyder and T.S. Nowlin — is
strictly from hunger. Not content merely to be a perfect example of the idiot
plot — which lurches from one scene to the next, only because each and every
character behaves like an idiot at all times — it also boasts some of the
clunkiest, most laughably atrocious dialog ever conceived.
With only a few exceptions, the performances
are stiff and unpersuasive, the line deliveries so wooden, they warp. And the
landscape-devastating battle sequences go on, and on, and on, and on ... as if DeKnight hopes to win us over by sheer brute
force.
