Grade: B

Verdict: Wazzup!

Details: Takehiro Murata, Hiroshi Abe, Naomi Nishida and Tsutomu Kitagawa (as Godzilla). Rated PG for monster violence and mild profanity. 1 hour, 37 minutes.

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Review: Godzilla, king of the monsters, ruler of the rubber suit, mack daddy of the megaplex, has gone back to the garden.

Not Madison Square Garden -- that ill-conceived place where Godzilla director Roland Emmerich and his computerized giant iguana limped through a thoroughly disgusting and maddening film version two years ago.

No, we're talking about the big lizard's Eden. His early film roots in movies like Godzilla, King of the Monsters. His Tokyo. Now, after 1998's Matthew Broderick debacle, the biggest of the big guys is back and firmly in the hands of the Japanese.

Nobody knows him better.

Godzilla 2000 is everything hard-core fans want it to be. So corny. So campy. So "MST3K"-ready. And, God bless it, so badly dubbed in English, it soars.

Sure it's bad filmmaking. Sure it's a guy -- actor Tsutomu Kitagawa -- clad in a nearly vintage latex Godzilla getup and stomping through Tokyo, knocking down cardboard mini-buildings and upending toy-sized cars with his gnarly feet. But that's the point.

Classic Godzilla movies have little use for computer-generated images. And though they are employed in Godzilla 2000, they are mostly background enhancements that give the film a more modern feel.

The plot is achingly simple. A corporate bigwig wants to kill Godzilla. Others want to scientifically study and understand him. There's also an eerie, kabillion-years-old alien ship that awakens and fights with Godzilla, then sucks up the monster's essence and creates its own formidable, giant, actor-in-a-suit freakazoid.

The film smartly pokes fun at several American-made summer epics -- like Jurassic Park, Independence Day and Twister. One witty turn features a trio of Godzilla chasers known as the Godzilla Prediction Network.

Many fans complained bitterly that at the end of the 1998 movie, Emmerich's Godzilla was killed by two simple jet missiles.

Godzilla 2000's answer: In an early confrontation with the Japanese military, a fusillade of dozens of missiles relentlessly peppers the monster again and again with ever-violent explosions. Once the smoke finally clears, Godzilla stands tall.

They don't call him the king of the monsters for nothing.

— Bob Longino, Cox News Service