I was looking for something extravagantly meaningful to do a few weekends ago, and had decided to try reducing my carbon footprint by reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville online in its entirety, while balancing on my head, in no less than 48 hours. Notwithstanding upside down, I was unable to get much past Melville's dedication of the novel to Nathanial Hawthorne, author of that book about cat-fracide, The Scarlet Litter, I think.

Instead, I spent most of that weekend on the phone to Ted Kennedy, trying to convince him to throw his public support behind Democratic candidate Barak Obama. With only about an hour and a half and a few sawbucks left on a Sunday night, I settled on Cloverfield, the new monster drama that including credits, lasts only 85 minutes. I didn't have any time for foreplay, and frankly I was in the mood for something swift and bulbous, like a tangy lobster roll fresh from the oven down at our corner Japanese sushi shack.

I would say Cloverfield delivers, but like a lot of food that's overcooked and kept in a warmer till it shows up at your door, there's little that sticks to your ribs before you're hungry again — if somewhat constipated — a short time later.

Lily (Jessica Lucas) and her pouty boyfriend Jason (Mike Vogel) are throwing a party at their huge Manhattan loft as the movie opens. It's a bon voyage soiree for Jason's brother Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who's moving to Japan - hey, wasn't that the little island that spawned some oversized city-stompers back in the 1950s and 60s?

Suddenly the building is shaken by something like a terrific earthquake, and everyone spills out onto the streets, joining everyone else trying to flee the city, because THERE'S A GI-NORMOUS CREATURE banging around the architecture, knocking off the Statue of Liberty and demolishing skyscrapers in a single swipe, which has hardly been tried since 9/11/01.

The filmmakers stick to the rules about revealing only glimpses of the creature, and I won't be a spoiler, but suffice to say it's a whopper. As in The Blair Witch Project, the cinematography is via camcorder, using sophisticated timing and action to generate maximum suspense, but thankfully the story's over before the style becomes too annoying.

Supposedly the camcorder's being held and used by Hud (T.J. Miller), one of the partygoers, though it strains credulity that he could cover so much diverse action so professionally on his own. But otherwise the 9/11-like atmosphere of a metropolis being reduced to bedlam and rubble is well-captured, and the sense of isolation and desperation for loved ones that catastrophe brings out seems accurate and genuine. Of course, the plot is all about who's going to survive.

I would recommend seeing Cloverfield, but it's such a fleeting diversion that maybe it would be better to wait for it to hit TV — it would make a great pilot for a series and is indeed produced by TV veterans. Until then, why not rotate clockwise, and goog' the url for Moby Dick on the only Net big enough to hold a nemesis his size, the World Wide Web, mate!

(There's also a movie version starring that guy from To Kill A Mockingbird, Gregory Peck, who is said to have wanted to balance out his role in that film as Atticus, opponent of white racists, with that of Captain Ahab, the great white supremacist in Moby Dick, I think.)

Copyright 2008 Metropolitan Community College