( EW.com ) -- No one can question Guillermo del Toro 's passion for Japanese monster movies . The fanboy-friendly director , who earned his Comic-Con bona fides by crafting oddball fantasias including Pan 's Labyrinth and the Hellboy films , has spoken at length about being weaned on creature double features as a kid in Mexico . And it was n't just the granddaddy of all man-in-a-rubber-suit behemoths , Godzilla , who cracked open his mind . He also swooned over the more esoteric beasties in Toho Studios ' kaiju ( i.e. , giant monster ) stable — titanic brutes like Mothra , Megalon , and Mechagodzilla . It goes without saying that the man 's geek credentials run deep . Now , with his latest film , the gargantuan monsters-vs.-mammoth-robots smackdown Pacific Rim , del Toro has somehow persuaded Hollywood to bankroll his tribute to the giddy junk food he grew up on . And that 's exactly what the film feels like : a 48-year-old kid playing with gigantic action figures in the world 's most expensive sandbox . Unfortunately , his deep-rooted passion never quite makes the leap from his imagination to the screen . EW : Idris Elba as Mandela in trailer . Set in the not-too-distant future , Pacific Rim picks up after a string of apocalyptic sea-monster attacks have reduced San Francisco , Manila , and Cabo San Lucas to dust . It turns out that a breach in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean has ripped open and loosed an armada of kaiju . Humanity is defenseless against their massive , razor-toothed maws and battering-ram limbs — at least until the military 's high-tech Jaeger program is conceived . The Jaegers ( German for `` hunters '' ) are 25-story robots operated by two human pilots whose minds are neurally linked in a process called `` the drift . '' The Jaegers are only as good as their operators , who must be able to read each other 's thoughts and intuit each other 's next moves . Go-it-alone rebels need not apply . But of course one does : Raleigh Becket ( Sons of Anarchy 's Charlie Hunnam ) , a hotshot pilot whose brother was killed in a kaiju rampage and who 's so wild and unpredictable he might as well have the name `` Maverick '' stenciled on his helmet . It does n't help matters that Hunnam has to bark goofy lines like `` Stay in the drift , the drift is silence ! '' EW : Martin Freeman says farewell to Bilbo Baggins . Silly dialogue is not the most serious problem with del Toro 's rock-'em-sock-'em monster mash . We 've come to expect a few groaners from our action spectaculars . But do the clichés need to be piled quite so high ? Raleigh is a loner who must learn to trust his new partner ( Babel 's Rinko Kikuchi ) and heed the lessons of his stern commander ( Idris Elba ) . Few of the actors leave much of an impression . And the ones who do ( Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as a shrill pair of wacky scientists ) are grating . Let 's be clear , though : The main reason anyone wants to see a movie like Pacific Rim is to watch robots smack the snot out of monsters and vice versa . And that 's where del Toro hits the biggest snag . The problem is a matter of scale . Pan 's Labyrinth cast such a spell partly due to the freaky details of a character like the Pale Man . The giant eye in the palm of his hand was designed with such jeweler 's precision that it was seared into your dreams ( and nightmares ) after you walked out of the theater . Here , del Toro 's monsters are so big , and shot in such unrelenting rainy darkness , that the audience never gets a chance to dissect and fetishize their monstrous anatomies and be swept away by their weirdness . And if you ca n't be transported by a humongous calamari leviathan with suction-cup limbs projectile-vomiting bioluminescent goo , that 's an issue . I do n't know if del Toro felt overwhelmed by the pressure of making a megabudget 3-D tentpole for the first time , but there is n't enough of his bewitching poetic touch in the film . In a sense , Pacific Rim winds up being not enough of a Guillermo del Toro movie . It 's more like a mash-up of Real Steel and the Transformers pictures . Which is a shame , because the idea is undeniably cool . But I 'd be surprised if a kid in Mexico or anywhere else walked out of Pacific Rim with a burning desire to direct a tribute to it when he or she grows up . Grade : B- . See the original story at EW.com . CLICK HERE to Try 2 RISK FREE issues of Entertainment Weekly . © 2011 Entertainment Weekly and Time Inc. All rights reserved .
Guillermo del Toro , ` ` Pacific News '' Critic says silly dialogue is not the most serious problem . He gives a grade of B- .