Pacific Rim

Del Toro is a dreamer. He's a visionary. If you give him a pile of money to make enormous robots fight enormous monsters at the end of civilization, he will work to make Pacific Rim a movie that makes you feel all the enormousness.

Pacific Rim is a special-effects behemoth, a toy franchise with a deafeningly loud movie attached -- Transformers with an A-level.

In essence, Pacific Rim features a series of Godzilla monsters battle an ever dwindling number of Transformers, layered over the plot from Independence Day, only dumber.

Feels like it's always struggling to break through the screen-if only to grab you by the scruff of the neck and drag you in.

It is possible to applaud Pacific Rim for the efficacy of its business model while deploring the tale that has been engendered -- long, loud, dark, and very wet. You might as well watch the birth of an elephant.

As adventures in mechanised mayhem go, the picture does, of course, crush the Transformers franchise into iron filings.

Proves that Guillermo del Toro is a master of many genres, as he accomplishes with this film things that countless other big-budget spectacles attempt to pull off. Pure delight from start to finish, channeling the best that kaiju movies have to offer.

Del Toro delivers a visual feast without falling into the ‘style over substance’ trap. Plenty of eye candy and thrilling action, but not devoid of emotion, what’s not to like?

If you have to make films about giant robots fighting sea monsters, then I reckon this is the way to make them.

Made to be seen on a stories-high screen with a jumbo tub of popcorn on your lap, Pacific Rim is serviceable summer entertainment, recommended based on the sheer scale of del Toro's onscreen spectacle.