CORE VALUES

Opening in the multiplexes this weekend:

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire--2021's Godzilla vs. Kong began with Bobby Vinton's "Over the Mountain, Across the Sea" on the soundtrack, as Kong showered in a waterfall to start his day. This new saga starts with Jim Reeves singing "Welcome to My World" as the super simian lopes through his new home at the center of the earth. Things aren't so bucolic for the big ape; he's plagued with dental pain, harassed by hideous creatures and, assuming he's the last of his kind, he's lonely.

Meanwhile, up on the Earth's surface, Godzilla is keeping busy. He vanquishes a spidery Lovecraftian nightmare in the streets of Rome and then, rather adorably, he curls up to get some shuteye in the Colosseum like it's a cat-bed.

In other words, this is the second American kaiju flick in a row that declines to take itself too seriously. Is it as good as last year's startlingly sober Japanese national rumination Godzilla Minus One? Not remotely. Is it even as good as Godzilla vs. Kong? Probably not. But it's still plenty of fun.

Kong plumbs an unexplored region of the Hollow Earth where he meets an endearing mini-Kong and others of his own kind. They're enslaved by Skar King, a vicious ape dictator, and his brutal goons. Kong understandably feels the need to act.

Along for the ride are a few humans, including Rebecca Hall, returning as the Kong-ologist from the previous film, Kaylee Hottle as her beautiful, pained-looking adopted daughter, the last known Skull Islander, Brian Tyree Henry as the conspiracy-minded podcaster and Dan Stevens as a cocksure kaiju veterinarian. But the focus is less on humans here than even in the earlier films in the series.

As preposterous as Godzilla x Kong is, it's also genuinely and freewheelingly imaginative. Director Adam Wingard and his gaggle of co-screenwriters give us scenes of Kong sauntering among the Pyramids, or Mothra over Rio, or Kong taking a belly-flop dive from the summit of Gibraltar, that seem to owe more to cheerful whimsy than to logical plotting.

Still, without too much straining, one could even tease out an allegorical political subtext here. It's not hard to guess who the mangy, patchy, orange-furred King Skar might symbolize, but the source of his tyrannical power has a parallel, too. Skar maintains his rule because he holds in bondage a huge, spiky, frosty-pale monster with freezy breath. This behemoth started to remind me of a certain currently subjugated Grand Old Party.

There was also something I liked about this movie's ending: It has one. It doesn't have twenty. When the dramatic arc has been satisfied, Godzilla x Kong doesn't keep piling on extra codas, as if panicky it hasn't given us enough. It wraps things up in under two hours and gets out while the getting is good. Let it serve as an example to future big franchise movies.