Review of the DVD - rating: * * * * *

Review of the film - rating: * * *

Okay, so now the secret's out that Godzilla ain't Citizen Kane, Columbia have come up trumps with a package to make owning the thing as attractive as possible. Despite the film's manifest weaknesses, this is the next must-own region 2 disc.

Picture and sound are faultless. The image, framed here for some reason even wider than the conventional Panavision at 2.40:1 (though you'd hardly notice the difference) is very sharp and artefact free right up to the closest of inspections. There's a good deal of fine detail visible, which is pretty essential in this case, since so much goes on in the wide shots. The layer change is okay at 54.33 - not the tidiest ever, but there again there's not a single still quiet moment in the film to place it anywhere better!

The sound is quite outstanding - clear dialogue even amidst the carnage, yet a whopping dynamic range to bring down the rafters. The split surrounds are used heavily throughout - thunderclaps, helicopters, breaking bones, you know the kind of thing - and you're immersed in the whole Godzilla experience. Whether that's a good thing or not is another matter, but you can't ask for more here.

The extras are unusually good, especially the featurette. This contains more actual laughs than the film itself, and is hosted by Harry Shearer's reporter character he plays in the movie. Look out for a shot of Godzilla's trailer pulling up behind Manhattan's skyscrapers, and a pay off from Shearer that's bark out loud funny, calling to mind his Simpsons pedigree.

The visual effects commentary - from supervisor Volker Engel and assistant Karen Goulekas is as detailed as you'd fear, although there are some worthwhile insights. The beached, scarred ship in the early sections turns out to be entirely computer generated - the helicopter tracking shot is hugely impressive. Meanwhile, they don't put up much of a defence against the awful CG helicopter / Godzilla chases among model buildings, but at least Karen seemed embarrassed about the ludicrous number of choppers Emmerich apparently insisted on later in these scenes.

The trailers are very welcome additions, and include the two famous teaser trailers which put all the bums on seats in the first place. The first is the T-Rex history museum one, ending with Godzilla's foot crushing the skeleton of the "tiny" dinosaur, and the second is of the poor fisherman who catches Godzilla in New York.

By contrast with these highlights, the "New York - before and after" photo gallery is a bit of a waste of time, with rather small photos pre and post FX work side by side. Oh well, can't win 'em all.

The animated menu is decent enough, with Godzilla's huge eye opening to reveal newsy type shots of the whole ordeal. The submenus are wiped in place with a tear and an aural woosh - fun - but the scene selection menus seemes a little buggy on my A100 - the text at the bottom was okay, but the numbers and pictures wouldn't highlight at the cursor moved around.

Throw in some decent biogs, a music video (shame it wasn't Puff Daddy's "Come With Me"), and this is just about all you could wish for from a Godzilla DVD. Bottom line is - it looked and sounded so good, it was more enjoyable than at the cinema. That first and last half hour is pretty good, actually, and you can always skip the middle 75 minutes now of course...

From the off, it transpires that Godzilla appears to take itself quite seriously, and more so than makers' own Independence Day. Nevertheless, the first half hour is nicely done - maybe they've pulled it off - can we really suspend disbelief?

Nah! It's no secret that the lizard reaches New York, and from the moment when he quite literally puts his foot in it, things go green-belly up. The plot makes not one iota of sense, the effects, initially impressive, fall apart when the film turns into a video game, some of the human relationship scenes are beyond awful, and none of it is interesting, exciting, funny or scary. In true Emmerich style, we can at least pass the time playing "spot the steal", as we count references from Jaws, Alien, Aliens, Alien 4, Jurassic Park (of course) and most unintentionally and obviously, it's sequel The Lost World. But the only real laughs to be had are from Harry Shearer, the voice of the newsreader in The Simpsons, here playing a newsreader. Very surreal.

Thank goodness that with half an hour to go, things ratchet up a notch, with a sequence that is almost original, gasp, and quite a bit which, though totally unbelievable, is actually a lot of fun. One or two lines of dialogue are quite good here too, which is a shock.

So it's not as dull as Deep Impact, and the Producer / Director (and scriptwriter) team of Dean / Emmerich try to pull off their bigger and better rehash of other peoples stuff again.

But here is the main problem. This film is sold on the tag line "Size Does Matter". It makes the assumption that, having becoming bored of Jurassic Park, we'll all think this must be better because the monster is even bigger. Hmm. Well, for my money, Godzilla is just too big. I was never at any point actually scared of the thing - there can be no "relationship" between something so big and a human so small. Anyhow, were Godzilla to end my days on this mortal coil, I'd just be instantly crushed. I was MUCH more scared of any one of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park who could eat me alive as soon as look at me. Yuck.

So does size matter? Not in the way the makers seem to think.