This is a truly great Godzilla film and, in my opinion, it sits right on the cups between the more serious Godzilla movies and the goofy ones like where Godzilla flying dropkicks Megalon. At the heart of this film is the true meaning of the franchise as a whole. Humanity is as fault. Godzailla was always supposed to represent the atomic bomb and its lasting effect on the Japanese people. America chose to drop the two biggest bombs the world has ever seen onto an enemy that was already defeated and the effects were felt for generations.

In this film we have a grieving Japanese scientist who infuses Godzilla cells into a rose that’s supposed to have his dead daughter’s spirit in it and he inadvertenly creates a new kaiju he names Biollante. Now, imagine if a Power Rangers villain of the week got a glow up, that’s what we have here. A huge rose plant with teeth and long whiplike vines.

Now, this film isn’t without its flaws. If you don’t like these 90’s and older kaiju films, then of course you’re not going to like this one. This movie is really goofy at times. The costume and design of Biollante is pretty great, espeically when you compare it to something like Baby Godzilla, but that doesn’t stop the whole thing from being a bit silly. The spirit of a dead scientist, who happened to be the daughter of another prominent scientist, goes into a mutated plant?

This film tried to do a bit too much. We had the story of Godzilla coming back after the events of The Return of Godzilla, we had the Japanese Self Defense Force and their new toy to fight the monster, we have the grieving doctor who creates Biollante (who then fights Godzilla), and we had an espionage storyline where three countries are fighting over Godzilla cells and a new bio defense weapon. So we cram all that into 104 minutes?

While this is a poorly paced film at times, and I do wish we got more of the kaifu battles. The short battle we got was still a lot of fun and reminded me a lot of my childhood, growing up on those cheesy monster movies. Back before the term kaiju was made popular in American pop culture. Back when all of these movies were so badly dubbed they became the equivalent of a pre-internet meme.

There’s a reason Godzilla Vs. Biollante is in the Criterion Collection. It’s a fun film with a complex story that lives right in the middle of classic and cheesy. I enjoyed this quite a bit. It can be streamed on The Criterion app and HBO Max.

Godzilla Vs Viollante gets an 8 out of 11