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There’s a lot of Amblin in Adam Wingard’s cheerfully goofy and excessively kid-friendly Godzilla Vs Kong.

Especially since these big franchise-specific tentpoles are almost the only thing anyone sees in theaters anymore. That said, years of viewing copious big-scale tentpoles and small-scale horror flicks almost exclusively through the lens of “life under Trump” or “generational trauma” makes the “just for kicks” Godzilla Vs. Kong something of an antidote. Like most recent monster movies, its concerned with tech overreach and the threat of climate change. However, it’s very much a throwback to the 1980’s and 1990’s action fantasies which didn’t explicitly need to concern themselves with the issues of the day because audiences seeing Godzilla (1998) could get cinematically schooled from Primary Colors, Wag the Dog or Bullworth.

There’s a lot of Amblin in Adam Wingard’s cheerfully goofy and excessively kid-friendly Godzilla Vs. Kong. Intentional or not, it’s a step back from the apocalyptic sensibilities of Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla and Michael Dougherty’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters after that latter film’s poor global box office. It sidelines most of the previous films’ deep-dive mythology. Whether you remember the nitty-gritty details or catch every reference to its predecessors is of little consequence. It doesn’t feel anywhere near as compromised or duct-taped (it runs only several minutes shorter than Skull Island or Godzilla), but I was reminded of the ruthlessly efficient and mostly stand-alone theatrical cut of Justice League. Legendary and Warner Bros. understood that plenty who hadn’t seen King of the Monsters might still show up to watch King Kong and Godzilla kick the crap out of each other.

Set a few years after Godzilla stomped Ghidorah, our story (courtesy of Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein) begins as the reigning champ pops back up on the grid (Jason Bourne-style) and causes just a little carnage. Meanwhile, Kong is being transported from his post-Skull Island habitat as a guide for a journey inside the Earth’s core, which A) is where the titans initially resided and B) contains a potentially world-saving power source. Title billing notwithstanding, Godzilla Vs. Kong is essentially a King Kong movie where Godzilla periodically shows up to make mischief. Godzilla has had two movies already and the one Kong flick out-grossed both of them respectively. Kong is introduced as a “just like us” monster, grouchily waking up, scratching his butt and otherwise going about his mundane Skull Island life before destiny intervenes. Godzilla is conversely presented as an agent of chaos.

Yes, there are humans along for the ride. #TeamGodzilla features Millie Bobby Brown reprising from King of the Monsters, although Kyle Chandler barely merits a cameo and (unless I missed them) nobody else returns from that entry. She teams up with a platonic pal (Julian Dennison) to track down Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry), a former Apex tech turned conspiracy theorist. They get into Goonies-style adventures when they discover… well, you’ll see. Meanwhile, representing #TeamKong, the great ape has been communicating with a deaf youngster (Kaylee Hottle) who is the adopted daughter of Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall, delivering ridiculous trailer-friendly lines with impressive gravitas). Both become key to the aforementioned Apex plot led by Walter Simmons (Alexander Skarsgård, giving off solid reluctant hero vibes) but spearheaded by Dr. Mark Russell (Demián Bichir) and his daughter (Eiza González).

Why Godzilla has gone rogue and how this all gets resolved I will not reveal. But for those asking, A) no, Godzilla and Kong’s respective mothers do not share a first name and B) yes, this would also look spectacular shown 1.44:1 on an IMAX screen. To be honest, the first 40 minutes are a chore, as the set-up and reestablishment of a post-King of the Monsters status quo feels comparatively limp due to the general lack of grandeur and pathos. But once the ape meets the lizard (or whatever Godzilla is), the movie understandably roars to life. The fight at sea, which has been the focal point of the marketing campaign, leads to a genuinely thrilling and vertigo-inspiring descent to the center of the Earth, and the momentum is mostly maintained right up to the “get your money’s worth” climactic smackdown.

There’s little narrative or artistic reason for Godzilla Vs. Kong to exist, save for that it was already in the pipeline when King of the Monsters bombed and that the MonsterVerse was launched on an explicit promise of eventually watching King Kong go 12 rounds with Godzilla. There’s still something almost quaint and old-fashioned in how this chapter makes no real effort to set up sequels or spin-offs. It’s an excessively simple movie, especially in its rousing second half, and it works as a Saturday matinee treat, a relic of a time before films like this were A+ mega-budget tentpoles. My kids are big fans of the previous MonsterVerse movies, and they enjoyed this one too. Godzilla Vs. Kong isn’t as poetic as Godzilla or as character-rich as Skull Island, but it gets the job done as straight-up IMAX-friendly rock-n-roll.    

The film's "no muss, no fuss" story frees up space to develop relationships—not just between humans, but humans and monsters, and monsters and monsters. The childless Lind, the surrogate parent Andrews, and the orphaned Jia learn to trust each other and work together until they've formed a makeshift nuclear family, like Ripley, Hicks and Newt in "Aliens." Madison bonds with conspiratorial podcaster, muckraker, and Apex investigator Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry) from afar because he shares her cynical, questing worldview. She trusts his voice and message so implicitly that she embarks on a road trip to find him with help from her friend Josh Valentine (Julian Dennison, unfortunately saddled with the least-necessary character—an exposition-spoonfeeding chatterbox nerd, reminiscent of Bradley Whitford's character in the last movie). Madison lost her brother in one of the first film's kaiju disasters, then lost her mom in "King of the Monsters." By the end of this one, she's acquired a big-brother-like partner in the form of Bernie, and takes a scolding but affectionate quasi-parental tone with Josh (situationally becoming the mom that Maddie was robbed of—by madness, then death). 

More consequential and moving, though, are the human/monster and monster/monster relationships. Kong and Jia are a magical screen team, in the tradition of heart-tugging pairings in animal pictures like "The Black Stallion," "Free Willy," and "E.T." The latter resonates extra-hard. The movie treats Kong's heartbeat as a conduit to Jia's mental state, as well as narrative Morse code-pulses for the viewer that reveal Kong's stress level and physical condition. Obviously a lot of the credit for the Kong-Jia friendship should go to the filmmakers, including editor Josh Schaeffer ("Pacific Rim: Uprising"); cinematographer Ben Seresin ("Unstoppable," "Pain and Gain"); and the nation-state of effects artists who did the designs, motion-capturing, rendering, compositing, etc. This a rare modern blockbuster with effects that are truly special. The Hollow Earth scenes in the middle of the picture, especially, are ecstatically dreamy kitsch, in the vein of a '70s sword-and-sorcery paperback book jacket, or a '70s-'80s psychedelic sci-fi or fantasy picture like "Zardoz," "Flash Gordon," "Tron" or "The Neverending Story." The neon primary colors in the Apex labs and Hong Kong streets are blissed-out decadent coolness: John Woo by way of British synthpop videos. Kong and Godzie might as well have done lines of coke off the top of a bus before laying into each other.

And yet, as is increasingly the case, this special effects-laden epic is paradoxically an actor's showcase—and it's scandalous that Terry Notary, who played Kong in this movie and "Skull Island," isn't being credited with the main cast, along with T.J. Storm, who has played Godzilla in three Monsterverse films.

Wingard is on record saying that the physicality of this King Kong is partly modeled on Bruce Willis in the "Die Hard" films and Mel Gibson in the "Lethal Weapon" series. You see the lineage in scenes of Kong dirty-fighting like a back-alley brawler, stumble-running through Hong Kong streets, and jumping off the deck of an aircraft carrier as Godzilla nukes it from below. But this is not just a great stunt-work job. It's according-to-Hoyle, Andy Serkis-caliber acting. Watch Kong cough up seawater after Godzilla almost drowns him, or collapse and doze off after vanquishing an enemy, or tear a winged beast's head from his neck and guzzle blood from the stump like a brigand downing a pint of mead. When Kong awakens after being airlifted to an Antarctic base to start his journey into the Hollow Earth, he has Martin Sheen's still-in-Saigon hangover-face from "Apocalypse Now." When Kong speaks sign language to Jia, looking away and then back at her, you see wheels turning in his mind: I hate what this kid just told me, and it's hard to get my mind around, but I accept it, because I have no choice. 

Equally arresting, though more opaque, is Storm's performance as Godzilla. This kaiju is primordial and ruthless, a zaftig brawler with a Charles Barkley caboose. He lacks Kong's grace and ingenuity with weapons, but compensates with ferocity and weight (and dragon breath). Godzilla rages like James Gandolfini in Tony Soprano murder-mode, slamming his bulk into any creature foolish enough to oppose him. He rears back with a glint in his eye before napalm-zapping city blocks. In a succession of bold first-person, shot/reverse shot close-ups, wherein Kong and Godzilla stare into each other's eyes, each trying to intimidate the other, Godzilla projects a mix of curiosity, alpha brutishness, and game-respect-game appreciation for the ape's refusal to submit. The look that Godzilla gives Kong at the end of the picture is Clint Eastwood with scales. The curtain-closing song selection that follows is marvelously counter-intuitive—a needle-drop of joy—but it could also have been Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat": "What can I possibly say?/I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you/I’m glad you stood in my way.”

Wingard has joked to interviewers that he wanted his superstar kaiju to kiss—but how much of a joke is that, really? So many action films are about stone-cold badasses meeting cute, punching out their differences, then joining forces to defeat a more urgent threat. Godzilla's steamroller density and Kong's rope-a-dope tactics and jaw-cracking punches evoke (on purpose?) the alleyway fight in the original "48 HRS" that Reggie Hammond and Jack Cates had to get out of their system before teaming up take on Billy Bear and Ganz. 

The two-against-one finale pitting Godzilla and Kong against the missile-spraying, jet-propelled, double-footed kangaroo-kicking Mechagodzilla is, like every other action scene in the picture, fully thought out in terms of each fighter's strengths and weaknesses. Not that Mechagodzilla has any. That's what makes him terrifying. He's a Terminator of kaiju. The film even gives him a Skynet moment. He tosses Godzilla around like a child. At one point, poor Godzie gets his head smashed into a vertical-ice-cube-tray office building like Jackie Chan going face-first into a popcorn machine in "Police Story." For a brief, unsettling instant while his cyborg double is thrashing him, a look of dazed insight flashes through h