Godzilla vs. Kong is, if nothing else, better than the last entry in this monsterverse of movies. And I’d even go so far as to say it’s a hell of a lot of fun once it stops wasting time and lets them fight (to quote the first flick). I just wish they’d tightened up the script and ejected (once again) most of the humans.

So, yeah, after destroying all major cities to no apparent effect in this movie, Godzilla has suddenly started to “randomly” attack cities (that so happen to house a big tech company). And Kong is still living secretly on his island with humans monitoring him for safety. It seems if Godzilla got wind of the big ape, there’ll be a throw-down for dominance. Who has the silverest back or the hottest atomic breath? Godzilla is king of the monster and Kong bows to no one. But when the humans cook up some random cockamamie plan that needs Kong, some whiz-bang Buck Rogers airships, and the center of the Earth, they take him off the island, making Godzilla crankier than usual.

Unfortunately, I thought the first half of this two hour movie was kind of… just there. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t good either… and the leaps of logic in a movie about giant monsters punching each other were pretty bad. I don’t need much logic in this kind of movie, but when you twist the plot into pretzels and expect me to leave that part of my brain turned off, they have made a mistake.

But, hey, all is largely forgiven once the movie finally gets around to letting Godzilla and Kong duke it out. The first round, however, was in that first hour and was kind of dumb. Getting past that and my annoying insistence on logic (I mean, why bother?), the last half of the movie and the big showdown was just big ol’ monster punching fun. It nails the scale of the beasties and lets them rumble in a knock down, drag out brawl that borders on wrestling in a big city.

It’s kind of like what we’ve always wanted as kids watching men in rubber suits do the same. It’s just fun and it looks amazing – they spent all the money and got amazing CG artists to give maximum destruction while retaining the scope and scale of such a fight. It’s what I was missing from the weightless brawls in the last Godzilla movie.

Does this movie have a theme or deeper message? Nah. Nor should it. Kudos to them for not trying to level some serious ideas on a fight between Lizzie and George. If you’re the kind of person who waited patiently for after school monster week and watched with pent up kid enthusiasm, this movie will deliver. Or, at least half of it will. You’ll just have to tolerate the first half.

Score: 81