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KING KONG Send This Review to a Friend
If director Peter Jackson cut nearly an hour out of the three-hour “King Kong,” it would be a better film. As it is, there are spectacular sections combining stunning special effects with the corny but still moving story of a giant ape and the woman who wins his heart and inspires her to want to protect him from his exploiters. But bigger is not always better. When the crew that discovers Kong gets to the remote island, a section of the journey turns into a Jurassic Park action saga featuring seemingly endless battles with frightening, prehistoric-looking creatures. The effects are visually stunning, but it veers the key story off course for too long. By the end of the film I was exhausted.
That said, Jackson and company have done an incredible job of recreating New York in the 1930s, both in the early set-up, and in the climactic scenes when Kong rampages through the streets, climbs the Empire State building with his blonde babe in tow, swats away planes shooting at him and eventually topples to the ground as a giant ape corpse. Andy Serkis plays Kong, with a mighty helping of digital enhancing.
The screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Jackson cleverly establishes a sensible plot. Naomi Watts charmingly plays Ann Darrow, an out of work vaudevillian who can do cartwheels and make people laugh. But there’s nothing to laugh about concerning 1930s poverty. The theater closes, she’s out of work and refuses to do burlesque. Stressing how bad things are there is a scene of a Hooverville refuge for the homeless in Central Park.
By chance Ann meets a quite funny Jack Black as Carl Denham, a fly-by-night, in-debt, filmmaker who cons her into becoming the star of his intended project. One step ahead of creditors and an arrest warrant, Denham sails with his team aboard an old ship. Instead of the intended location, the vessel winds up at an uncharted island. Aboard is Adrien Brody as writer Jack Driscoll, who is supposed to deliver a screenplay and falls in love with Ann, Kyle Chandler as hammy actor Bruce Baxter and various shipboard characters, including Jamie Bell as the inexperienced Jimmy.
The film’s first major error is making the island natives overly grotesque to the point of obnoxiousness. Then the Jurassic Park syndrome sets in. There’ll be those who get a kick out of all the battles between the visitors and one strange creature after another, but I wanted to get on with the story. There has to be at least one scene in which Kong saves Ann in order to for them to bond, but that’s all the film needs.
Watts is totally appealing, whether trying to make Kong laugh with her show business antics, or eyeing him with fascination and admiration. Her acting goes a long way to make the situation reasonably convincing. The magic of what filmmakers can achieve with all of the sophisticated techniques now at their disposal does the rest.
Does this improve on 1933 version that has become a classic? Visually, and how! But there is still something about the simplicity, innocence and excitement of the primitive but pioneering special effects that in a way makes the old film less encumbered fun. Still, the new "King Kong" is an overwhelming, eye-popping sight. A Universal Pictures release.
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