Gargantua: El hijo de Godzilla

This was a movie?

I'm really not sure what's worse....a hyped-up film that turns out to be a major flop or a TV movie that was quickly made to cash in on a hyped-up film that turned out to be a major flop.

GARGANTUA is in the latter category, created as the FOX network's answer to GODZILLA, and there's really nothing good I can say about it. The acting was bad (save Baldwin....no relation to the Baldwin brothers), the special effects were bad (it was a good thing that daddy dragon was only in it for about twenty seconds of screentime....he was a joke), the storyline was miserably cliched and boring (even down to the Australian villian...oooooh....), and even the music by J. Peter Robinson, who's usually pretty good, is disappointing.

The plot...about a small son finding a baby dinosaur and its increasingly bigger family who searching for it....is probably the worst TV movie idea ever established for the nineties. In fact, the premise sets itself up as a [bad] episode of the Twilight Zone, and keeps going for an hour and a half. It even ends up rooting for the monsters and defending their actions, even after they thrash some cities and eat some people (I'm sorry...but if a giant dinosaur was stepping on my house, I'D shoot him with a rocket launcher....Was there a Greenpeace member behind this thing?). By the time the film was over, I was ready to quit the film-reviewing business, and I couldn't figure out how in the world they ever allowed this thing to be made.

All in all, terrible. Go rent King Kong vs. Godzilla if you want some real, smashing-buildings fun.

1/2 out of ****

It sounds like the long-lost sequel to WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS (1967) and comes in an ALIEN-style video box, but this is actually a lame kiddie-style tele-movie that debuted on Fox.

Adam Baldwin is a widowed scientist on the Australian island of Malau with his depressed young son, where illegal DDT dumping results in a variety of mutant creatures. A cute baby salamander monster with big goo-goo eyes makes friends with the son after he feeds him cheese balls. A not-so-nice medium sized one with sharp teeth and horns follows, and a really mean giant mama monster comes searching for her babies and terrorizes the city. Naturally, the military shows up, act as dense as they usually do in these movies and blast the big one. THEN the father shows up!

I suppose that kids may like it, but the lousy dialogue and nauseating family dramatics will be a bit much for adults to stomach. FX give new meaning to the term "uneven"--the two smaller monsters (either animatronics or CG) aren't bad, but the larger ones are almost on the same level of those old Saturday Matinée GODZILLA flicks.

And the moral of the story hasn't changed--be nice to giant lizard monsters or they will stomp on you!

Gargantua really isn't a bad film at all, once you understand that it is really designed for kids. It doesn't follow the standard rampaging monster picture formula; and it is definitely not an old fashioned "D" monster movie. It is an adventurous morality tale with modern ecological elements for kids, and the young at heart, to enjoy.

The monsters are not vicious; they are merely trying to protect themselves as a family. There is a clear parallel between them and the young boy who has lost is mother and clings so desperately to his father, the scientist in the times of danger. A good monster picture always has a scientist to explain the obvious to us. This one has a science hero who is a conservationist, determined to save the monsters if possible. The film has many elements with which children will quickly identify. It is really produced on that plane. I love a good monster flick of any kind and I can appreciate Gargantua on the level.

The production values of Gargantua are quite good. The camera work and the sea-going adventure scenes are quiet well done. The acting is superior and the plot is cohesive. Let the film thrill the kids and realize that it's not really made for jaded, overly-critical adults. It sure beats the pants off of the spate of formula snake movies and genetic mutation muddles I've seen of late. Let the kids have their fun with Gargantua, and go pick on "Boa", or Pythons 2, quagmires truly worthy of disdain.

This movie was pretty awful but I must say that I've seen many movies that were much, much worse. Remember Jaws 4 where the shark actually ROARED?

After reaing some of these reviews I was half expecting to see Bela Lugosi pop up and say "pull da string!" I'll give it a 4 out of 10.

I know lotsa people out there really didn't like this film, but I did. Sure, the monsters were dodgy, but the actors were fantastic. There were references to modern technology, and the characters were actual people. The death of Jack Ellway's wife was a nice touch, it made the bond between father and son more believable. The story line is well-worn and unbelievable, but the baby and the mother are alright looking monsters, I guess. Adam Baldwin's character, Jack Ellway, is a contrast to the majority of his other roles as thugs, uniformed nonities and bad guys. It's also different from his characters in ID4, Major Mitchell and in The Patriot, Capt. Wilkins. In this movie he's just a regular guy, newly widowered, doing the best he can for his son while doing his job. Emile Hirsch has a few scenes in which he isn't allowed to shine as much as he might, (like where he cuts his finger, that was noticably fake) but he is the central character and a good actor as well. Doug Penty (Paul Bateman) has been in a few TV series, such as Paradise Beach, and, while he says a few things that are overly serious for his character, he plays the laidback surfie reporter very well. (Doesn't hurt that he's also gorgeous!!) Other cast members - Julie Carmen (Alyson Hart), Alexander Petersons (Derek), Peter Adams (Dr. Hale), Monroe Reimers (President Moki) and Bobby Hosea (Colonel Wayne) - help make this movie enjoyable as well.