Movie 155: Gargantua

After a series of tremors, widowed (that’s important) marine biologist Jack Ellway (Adam Baldwin) and his son Brandon (Emile Hirsch) go the island of Malau to see what the effect on the sea life has been. Turns out its pretty major as a trench has opened up and a bunch of DDT has made some salamanders grow. A lot. The little baby that Brandon befriends is fine, but 9ft big brother causes some problems. Which is nothing compared to what happens when mum and dad turn up…

We’re deeply in to 50’s B movie territory here. This is from 1998, and it’s a TV movie, so its not a Sci Fi original. If it was the Brandon would be a teenager and there’s be a lot of shots of women in bikini’s in it. What you have is generally a lot more innocent, and cheesy as hell.

I’m a big fan of Adam Baldwin. He’s probably my favourite Baldwin, even though he technically isn’t one (of those Baldwins). We don’t really get the Jane from Firefly/Casey from Chuck (weirdly Brandon references a dog he had called Casey like some weird cosmic in joke 9 years before anyone could possibly get it) or Animal Mother from Full Metal Jacket Adam Baldwin here though. He’s a nerd basically. His voice is even different. He has the chops to more or less pull of what is a Daniel Jackson-ish character but its slightly weird casting from the other work of his I’ve seen.

Emile Hirsch, who you may know now as he was Speed Racer and stuff, is a kid in this film. Proper kid, almost a teenager. He’s not bad for a kid really. A lot of his scenes are with an animatronic 3 foot tall puppet so there’s not a whole bunch to do, but he doesn’t suck or anything. And the two of them has a scene towards the end of the movie that literally choked me up. Because I’m a big pussy.

The whole thing is basically a big allegory of the father/son relationship of the lead characters which is relatively clever for this kind of nonsense. And it works at times without being too heavy handed at all. Kudos.

As for the special effects… Well sometimes they are actually surprisingly good. Longshots of the little monster in particular. I’m not sure if its CGI or stop motion, but its decently done. The puppets are a bit dodgy but also pretty decent with a good range of motion and occasionally good skin texture. Not Jurassic Park by any stretch, but they didn’t have the budget for that.

If you stumble across this and you like 50’s B movies you’ll probably like this. I love a cheesy old B Movie, so I enjoyed this one too. Don’t take it too seriously and you’ll do just fine

Next up: Jaws 2