Concept: Exactly what the title suggests, a monster mash.

• • Very fun, effective popcorn movie that is successful because it knows exactly what its audience wants: a duke-em-out no-holds-barred match between the two greatest giant monsters of the movies.
  • Think of this as a very good boxing movie where the two giant fighters really don’t like each other and they fight in arenas filled with buildings or military ships. And like a good boxing movie, the two opponents are charismatic and well-developed, although it features Kong more than Godzilla.
  • Both King Kong and Godzilla have their fans, and even though it’s natural that Kong might inspire more empathy because a giant ape emulates human emotions more than a giant lizardly T-Rex, the movie doesn’t take sides between one and the other.
  • The special effects and CGI are great, and the human interactions are completely inconsequential (as is ordinarily the case with these monster movies). A good creature feature that balances the charismatic monster action with excellent human stories is extremely rare (“Jurassic Park” being the only example that comes to mind.)
  • I’ve been a fan of monster movies since I was a kid. Back then, my local NYC TV station would show a monster movie every afternoon, conveniently after school. So I’d watch all of them, over and over, never getting tired of them. Now even to my child brain back then, some of them were lame, but the creatures never were. I was a Godzilla fan myself, so that’s who I was rooting for in this movie.
  • Viewed on an Optoma HD28DSE projector, 92” screen, HBOMax on Roku 3. Here, the visuals didn’t stand out so much as the sound. All the explosions, the whopping, Godzilla’s roars, Kong’s bellows make this a tremendous audio experience. My subwoofer blasted so much that it knocked down the digital frame that normally stands on it (the only time it’s ever done so.)
  • OK for kids, maybe 8 and up.

Godzilla vs Kong (2021) 85%