Review: 'Godzilla vs. Kong' delivers exactly what it promises — big monsters, big booms

When you’re making a movie about 400-foot tall monsters having a street brawl in the middle of a major city, taking yourself too seriously can be a big problem.

That has been an issue with some of the recent “Godzilla” and “King Kong” movies that have tied the universe of the two titans together. It’s one thing to make a gritty reboot with modern special effects, but that grit needs a governor. It’s difficult to enjoy monsters battling in the streets of Florida when you’re constantly being reminded that several hundred people probably die every time Godzilla swishes his tail.

So it’s great to see that “Godzilla vs. Kong” seems to know exactly what it is. It leans into the camp factor that, frankly, should be present in this type of movie. Sure, Godzilla has served in the past as a symbol of man’s arrogance in the nuclear age. But this movie has another, more-direct version of that arrogance, which I won’t spoil here.

It certainly won’t spoil anything to tell you that this movie delivers exactly what it promises: Godzilla and King Kong beating the ever-loving snot out of one another in one great set-piece after another. Director Adam Wingard gets bonus points for incorporating some new and different camerawork into the fight scenes, adding a dimension that’s not typical for the genre.

I could tell you about the plot, but honestly, who cares? Because this script also does everyone a favor by leaving the humans out of it, for the most part. We all know what we’re here for: big monster, big boom – the fundamentals of the kaiju genre.

A monster movie like “Cloverfield” worked so well because it followed a small group of people simply trying to survive an event they could barely comprehend. But a storyline like that would be a distraction here. The human subplot in “Godzilla vs. Kong” is also heavily tied in with Kong and the other titans, so even when we’re spending time on the ground — or risking our lives traveling through a gravity well to the center of the earth where, somehow, the sun is still shining (I told you, they lean heavy into the camp, and it’s all good) — Kong is still hanging around.

And the movie’s climax does exactly what it should: Take all the fights that came before and make them look like a romp on the playground.

But before that happens, Godzilla and Kong have to try and settle things in an all-out street brawl, except the street is the entire city of Hong Kong. All the buildings are lit up with neon lights, and while there is definitely a meme out there turning this fight into a techno dance battle, it’s still a great action sequence and a showcase for the special effects team.

And again, this is where the movie does well by taking the human element out of things. In the previous films, these big fight set-pieces would be intercut with PG-13 human carnage, which continues to get bloodier by the year. I think the filmmakers know that it’s obviously not just adults who want to watch these big monsters fight. If you’re looking for a deep allegory about man’s hubris and the woe it causes, this ain’t it. This is a big-fun monster movie, and I had a good time watching it.