Overall Rating
  Awesome: 46.8%
Worth A Look: 20.2%
Average: 10.77%
Pretty Bad: 12.79%
Total Crap: 9.43%
16 reviews, 201 user ratings
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| King Kong (2005) |
by Scott Weinberg
"THIS is what a lifetime of movie geekery can yield!"
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There's nothing better than seeing a real live movie geek turn into a bona-fide Hollywood maestro. You could be talking about Sam Raimi' and "Spider-Man" or Quentin and "Kill Bill" or Peter Jackson and "King Kong" -- but when guys like these get full run of the toy store, some truly magical things can happen. Simply put, "King Kong" is a remake made for all the right reasons.Let's get the nitpicks out of the way right now. They're the ones you've already heard before:
1. At just over three hours in length, Peter Jackson's King Kong is easily 20-some minutes longer than it needs to be. As much as I love the final product, the movie feels like six scoops of ice cream -- when you already had a small headache brewing at scoop number five.
2. Several of the peripheral characters are presented in oddly scattershot fashion. We get the impression that Boat Captain and Plucky Kid are ultimately going to amount to something in the grand scheme of the overstuffed narrative ... but they don't, really.
3. The musical score by James Newton Howard, which was commissioned at the last minute after Howard Shore (mysteriously) left the project, is really quite generic and dry. Save for a few rousing strains during the action scenes, the musical accompaniment leaves a whole lot to be desired, which means the actors and the FX techs have to work extra hard to sell every scene. Plus a movie this enjoyable really does deserve an appropriately thrilling score.
Well, that pretty much covers the downside of King Kong, the $200 million production that Universal has been trying to get made since before Dino De Laurentiis even released his 1976 big monkey mega-turkey. Because Peter Jackson is, quite simply, a wild, maniacal, genius, and his labor-of-love King Kong remake is a majestically grand and resoundingly entertaining adventure movie.
We all know the story by now: A scheming movie director named Carl Denham woos a down-on-her-luck actress to star in a mysterious movie that's shooting in exotic parts unknown. Jack Driscoll, nautical first mate in the original film and a kindhearted screenwriter in the remake, is forced into Hero Duty when the crew finally arrives on Skull Island and the leading lady is kidnapped by a primate the size of a small stadium.
And then the fun really begins.
What I love most about this remake is the way in which it expands on the simple-yet-lovely themes that were present in the 1933 original. Through the eyes of Jackson we see that Kong is actually a very smart creature, which is something that never really occurred to me in the earlier films. We also get a few new shades regarding the Kong & Ann relationship. In the 1933 and 1976 movies, there was a rather creepy vibe of, well, let's call it "giant monkey horniness," but Jackson finds a way to circumnavigate this prickly patch. In his film, Kong is a big clumsy man who's just found a beautiful little kitten to play with. And yes, it's actually a very sweet relationship -- when there aren't legions of swamp creatures and marauding dinosaurs around to ruin the moment.
Jack Black (as feisty filmmaker Carl Denham) and Adrien Brody (as the bookish writer-guy) do fine work throughout, and Peter Jackson is to be commended for casting this flick against predictable type. Black has a rascally twinkle that intermittently threatens to turn villainous, and Brody brings a quietly nerdish nobility to his role of reluctant hero. But then there's Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow. And, friends, I say bravo. The gal is just fantastic here, whether she's playing a sincerely emotional scene with simple humans or forced to play-act in front of a CG-created mega-monkey. Watts is the heart and the glue of King Kong, and in a perfect movie-world she'd actually get an Oscar nomination for her work here.
The star, of course, is Kong himself, and the technical wizardry used to bring this leaving, breathing character to cinematic life .... again I must say bravo. To paraphrase a great old piece of movie marketing, you will believe a monkey can make you cry. I didn't find myself reaching for a hanky during King Kong's final reel, but let's just say the great ape's death scene is a helluva lot more moving than Leo's frozen slip off of Titanic. The fact that the movie's given you a real and wonderful chance to care about a giant computer-generated gorilla... That's the textbook definition of Movie Magic.
Much will be written about the various set pieces strewn throughout King Kong: the "vines" scene, the "vampire bat escape," the "New York rampage," and (my favorite) the "disgusting giant worm gore-fest," but the reason Jackson's new baby will be embraced so enthusiastically is because it's a whole lot more than the sum of a few fantastic parts.This massive flick is warm and nostalgic, dark and dangerous, sly and sweet, delicate, ferocious, and enthralling in a way that only great movies can be. One can easily forgive a small handful of narrative hiccups and speed-bumps, because Peter Jackson's "King Kong" is so clearly a movie about the love of movies. (Plus it's got, like, a million monsters in it.)
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=13654&reviewer=128
originally posted: 12/14/05 22:17:20
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USA
14-Dec-2005 (PG-13)
DVD: 14-Nov-2006
UK
N/A
Australia
14-Dec-2005
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