First thing I must say is that I'm a bit of a fan of the old monster movies - giant ants, spiders, lizards, what have you, they're all great fun and Godzilla was always a particular favourite. They were just so spectacularly silly and entertaining in the snort and giggle and 'look at the man in the rubber suit squash a replica of Tokyo' good times.

That being said, I think that maybe my hopes for this movie were too high and I just expected something.... more. Certainly there was much of the city smashing as can be expected (the CGI was great! but all I could think of was that Godzilla had cankles) but overall, for both myself and my friend I went with, we just couldn't get involved in the storyline. The characters were flat and rather one-dimensional, and the only character with any sort of development and back-story got bumped off pretty early on. The actors did a decent enough job with what they'd been given, but I swear that a couple of them had pretty much the exact same expression on their face through the whole. entire. film! Basically, it was a rather shallow plot which was just there to hang the monster fight scenes on. Very unfortunate. Plus the ending didn't really make sense.

And the plot holes! Ye gods the plot holes! Big enough for the monsters to walk through! That and some of the decisions that the In-Charge types make would cause one to wonder if the world is worth saving if they put people that stupid in power.

I'm all for making an homage to the monster movies of old, but I was really hoping that they would have put more effort in making a script that was more engaging, with more depth.

So, all in all, pretty much a waste of an afternoon. Much crash and smash but little else. Another friend of mine asked if I would have liked it better if I'd seen it in 3-D, and, yes, it might have made it more enjoyable, but I think I'll stick with my old black and white classics - much less than half the price and far more satisfying :)