Godzilla has always been a tad pear-shaped,  but this time around he’s sporting a pretty sizable gut.  When seen in profile stomping through the wreckage of a burning city, all he needs is a wife-beater t-shirt and you’ve got a giant reptilian Jake Lamotta gone to seed, blindly driven by haywire machismo, lashing out at any and everything around him.

The first in a trio of monsters to go up against Godzilla is Baragon, a ridiculous looking creature with a horn on his nose and goofy floppy ears.  Aside from the ability to burrow underground, there’s not much that separates him from any other giant monster.  To be fair, the silly creature might have other abilities, but who’s ever going to know?  Baragon plays Joey Lamotta to Godzilla’s Jake, and immediately gets the crap beat out of him, never to be seen again.

King Ghidorah, on the other hand, is supposed to be something different.  The beneficiary of some ancient PR provided by prophets in legend and lore down through the ages, Ghidorah finds himself in the unexpected position of living up to a possibly over-hyped rep.  Still, there’s no getting around the fact that Ghidorah is gigantic!  And he can fly!  And he’s got three heads!  And crackling energy bolts blast from each and every one of his mouths!

And he’s one of the Guardian Monsters!

That’s got to count for something.  Not every monster can lay claim to that title.  As a matter of fact, only three come to mind.  But now that I think about it, Baragon was one of them and Mothra the other.  Maybe it’s not such a big deal after all.

Forget I even mentioned it.

Preoccupied with thoughts like, “Just what the hell is Ghidorah the King of?” and trying to decide whether the over-hyped  monster is a has-been or never-was, it comes as something of a surprise to realize that the three-headed flash in the pan is dead.  Killed by Godzilla.

Next up is Mothra, and guess what — Godzilla kills Mothra also, kind of leaving the story with nowhere to go.  Unaccountably, the expiring moth explodes in a Disney-esque burst of shimmering lights.  Then Mothra’s sparkling, iridescent life force envelopes Ghidorah, reanimating and bringing the fallen Guardian back to life.

Presented with a second chance to deliver on all the inflated claims made about him, Ghidorah rises from the ashes like a gigantic, golden, three-headed phoenix, ready to do battle with Godzilla one more time and…

And not surprisingly, Godzilla kills him again.

Really.

At this point, the film is dangerously close to jumping genres and turning into Groundhog Day for giant monsters as, believe it or not, Ghidorah is resurrected yet again (by the thousands of souls contained in some ancient crockery) only to be killed a third time.

Fortunately for everyone involved, the third time is indeed a charm, and Ghidorah remains dead, or at least has the good sense to play possum and refuse to be humilitated in yet another terminal battle with Godzilla.

This movie has a lot of problems, and predictable, one-sided monster rumbles are only the beginning.  There’s also a bunch of needless mumbo-jumbo about Godzilla being the personification of the pain and death caused by Japan in the Pacific during WWII.

Trust me, this film hasn’t got enough going for it to worry about a second overlay of meaning.  Take care of business first and stage some surprising, fun monster battles before you start dragging in your high falutin’ metaphors.

Finally, the special effects are an uneasy hybrid of guys in monster suits and CGI.  Later in this final series of Godzilla films, the mix between miniature sets, rubber monsters and CGI gets pretty good, but here, instead of creating it’s own sort of oddball reality, it just comes off as too ambitious at best, and intermittently cheesy and lame at worst.

Make no mistake about it, Godzilla is definitely kicking monster butt in this film, but (and who would have guessed?) it turns out you need more than that.  I’m out!

In 1966 the Anti-Megalosaurus Force (AMF) was established to defend Japan from Monsters. Who knew? Not just a bunch of flummoxed army guys wearing white gloves, but an elite force — 4072 members strong. Talk about a thankless job. The only profession taking more of a beating than the AMF when Godzilla makes landfall, is the home insurance industry, which has been busy selling policies between monster rampages.

While the AMF is more than equal to the challenge of a Mothra (yup, they can take on a giant … well, moth) or a Gargantuan (sure, they’re big, but it’s hard to take seriously a monster who eats people — and then spits out their clothes), the AMF and their flatbed-transported Maser Guns are still not quite up to the challenge of a Godzilla. During their first battle with The Big G, things take a turn for the worse and the order, “PULL BACK!” is given. I’m thinking, this is probably the first maneuver learned by any new AMF recruit.

Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (Gojira tai Mekagojira) presents a sort of home front take on giant monster movies. Early on, while others are running for their lives, a man screams, “My house! My house!” as Godzilla stomps by. Not long after Godzilla’s first rampage, the prime minster meets with her science advisor and admits that, “after forty years, the people are weary of always rebuilding .” If there’s a growth industry in Japan, it’s definitely in construction. Even more than a strong union, in terms of job security, Godzilla’s the best thing that’s ever happened to Japanese carpenters.

If you think about it, Japan’s national psyche has also taken its share of hits over the years. Generation after generation has grown up running from Godzilla. It’s very possible that first your grandparents, then your parents, and now you, along with your children, have run from this monstrous creature. It’s all you know to do. Run.

But not anymore. The decision is made to build Mechagodzilla. Using the skeleton of the first Godzilla, destroyed in 1954 (yes, there’s more than one Godzilla. Don’t ask, ok?), a giant bio-robot is constructed, and like any new technology, there are always a few bugs that need to be worked out. When Godzilla roars in battle, it triggers the DNA in Mechagodzilla’s skeleton, overriding it’s new programming and sending the giant bio-robot on a building-smashing spree of its own.

Even though Mechagodzilla is armed with an Absolute Zero Gun that can destroy an object at the molecular level, there’s some crazy protocol that dictates giant monsters must first be fired at by tanks, and when that doesn’t work, a barage of missiles is lauched against them, which invariably is followed by the crackling energy botls from a Maser Gun. Then and only then, if a new super weapon exists, can it be tried out. Mechagodzilla is armed with its own version of tank shells, missiles and Maser Rays. If it had used the Absolute Zero Gun right off the bat, at a minimum, the robotic creature might have saved six or eight city blocks — maybe the whole east side.

Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla has pretty good Spielberg-like direction, a decent script (basically GI Jane meets huge marauding monster), and the special effects are a snappy combination of the traditional guy-in-a-rubber-monster-suit and CGI. Miniture sets are detailed and creepy, and the film focuses more on the monster aftermath and human side of the story than most Godzilla movies.

There are two stand-out Godzilla fight scenes. In the first, Godzilla punts a tank like it’s a football. In the other (something of a call back to 1962′s King Kong vs Godzilla), Mechagodzilla grabs Godzilla by the tail and swings him around and around before letting go and sending him flying halfway across town.

I’m in!