Godzilla vs. Biollante

Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)

Runtime: 104 minutes

Directed by: Kazuki Ohmori

Starring: Koji Takahashi, Kunihiko Mitamura, Yoshiko Tanaka, Masanobu Takashima, Megumi Odaka

From: Toho

I don't have too much to say here, except that the Letterboxd review below explains just how manic and loony this movie is.

“Goddammit, Godzilla!”- Actual quote from this movie

You know, sometimes I don't quite know how to rate a film. This is one of those times. There's a good reason why... this has such a cracked plot it makes my head spin! I guess I'll go with 3 1/2 stars and here's why.

I don't want to spoil too much about this movie that directly follows the last one (the Godzilla of 1984), but this is about genetic engineering and how a crazed scientist thought that combining human, Godzilla, and rose cells could possibly have been a good idea. That is not the only odd thing about it by any means. This is just a few of the many disparate and sometimes curious elements that are present here:

* ESP
* ESP WITH PLANTS
* Random rock music
* Terrorism
* A fake Middle Eastern country
* A nuclear plant whose name I am not 100% sure of as it was seen via late 80's computer graphics but I swore it said OBAMA
* America is portrayed as the villains
* A reference to a then-open clinic in the United States that was a sperm bank only for such lofty people as Nobel Prize winners (the Repository for Germinal Choice)
* Appearances by popular Japanese figures

The movie is able to balance all this and many different characters rather well; it's never confused but it is muddled and definitely uneven. As for the kaiju vs. kaiju action, it's different from the norm. If you prefer G wrecking a city, that was well-done. “Boring” is never a word you can accurately use to describe this; the oddness is almost always ever-present so you can sit back and wonder what unexpected direction or unanticipated moment will happen next.