King Kong

Ever notice how romance films follow a certain formula? The girl always has two guys who love her, one is a bit of a geek, and seems well meaning, but you know there's just no chemistry. The other is a strong handsome gorilla. If you just know in your heart watching these two guys compete for the girl that the geeky one is just not the one for her and the strong one who would defend her from a trio of T-Rexes is the one she should be with; well has Peter Jackson got a movie for you.

At its heart, King Kong is first and foremost a love story. Its been much too long since I've seen the original 33 version or even the 70s remake, so I won't be doing any comparisons to those films. I will say that King Kong is definitely the central character of this movie, and he is more than just a big ape. I know it's all Andy Serkis and a lot of CGI, but for 2 hours I could suspend my disbelief and just enjoy this large gorilla and his romance with Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow. The way Kong acts around her, entertains her, protects her, and is jealous of others getting near her in this story was enjoyable to watch. (the film is actually 3 hours, but we don't meet Kong til a third of the way in).

Plot breakdown with spoilers

For a good hour, we get introduced to our intrepid film producer Carl Denham played by Jack Black, and struggeling stage actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts). We get the back story on how Denham sets off for Skull Island despite having his movie cancelled, and despite his backers calling the police on him. Then we suffer through a long boring boat voyage where Adrien Brooding, I mean Adrien Brody raises pained eyebrows at Ann. He is the tortured screen play writer Jack Driscoll, and although Ann adores his plays, she doesn't find him all too handsome. We also meet Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler in a role that would have been perfect for Bruce Campbell), the films self obsessed leading man who provided comic relief throughout the film, and the motley crew of the VENTURE. Some of these first scenes I found a bit self indulgent by director Jackson. We get weird off kilter scenes as Brody types S K U L L I S L A N D, reminiscent of the off kilter scenes when Frodo put the ring on. I found them unnecessary, and to be perfectly honest, I found most of the exposition in the first third of the film to be unnecessary. Fifteen minutes would have done just fine as an intro to getting to Skull Island and the classic Kong story.

Finally, the fog lifts just in time for The VENTURE to crash into the rocks of Skull Island and our intrepid film maker and band go ashore where they meet some really scary natives. For the record, it is NOT the minority character that first buys the farm, it's one of the standard caucasian males who winds up with a spear through his chest. Apparently the natives are not terribly friendly on Skull Island. Soon, although the rest of the crew comes in guns a blazing, our dashing and beautiful heroine is captured by the stealthy natives right off the boat, and offered up to Kong. Any other ship captain would have said, "too bad for her, we have set sail", but the boat returns, and everyone disembarks fully armed to find and bring the lovely Ms.Darrow back.

We are then treated to a lot of cinematic excess by Peter Jackson. As Jeff Goldblum pointed out in Jurassic Park "Just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you should" Good advice, because some of the scenes in the middle seem like purely gratuitous use of CGI and "see what we can do with 200 million dollars?" on Jacksons part. Although I enjoyed the scene of stampeding dinosours it was too long and unnecessary, ditto for the valley of the big huge ugly nasty bugs, and not one or two but THREE T-Rexes facing off with King Kong. Sometimes, Peter Jackson, less is more! That being said, all the excessive scenes were still enjoyable to watch, I especially loved the way King Kong protected Anne and battled the T-Rexes all at the same time. In fact, I loved ALL the scenes that featured King Kong and Ann, the two actually had quite a lot of on screen chemistry.

Major Plot Spoiler for those who have NO familiarity with the King Kong Story

The final part of the movie, we see Kong brought to New York, although I haven't a clue how they lifted him onto their boat. Nor do I understand how a large gorilla capable of defeating three T-Rexes could be brought down by the crew of the VENTURE chloroform or not. I felt sorry for King Kong as he was shackled for the amusement of theater goers. I also loved the look he shot Adrien Brody as he recognized him as the one who took Anne away from him. Well of course, Kong gets to see his girlfriend again, and takes her on his last ill fated trip up the Empire State Building, and I am sorry to say, Kong and Anne do not get to ride off into the sunset. I will say that the final scenes of the movie were very well done, and very exciting to watch. Kong, I was rooting for you, I really had hoped the film would end with you getting the girl!

Direction Well, we all know that Peter Jackson has a shelf full of Oscars for a certain trilogy of movies, and is good at using hundreds of millions of dollars for creating spectacular movies in New Zealand. A few scenes definitely reminded me of that. In one scene Brody creeps up the mountain to rescue Ann Darrow from King Kong, and he looks distinctly like Gollum following Frodo and Sam. Overall, I loved the look of the film, I loved the actors, the cinematography was outstanding, but the film was in some serious need of editing. More is not always better, and I think I would have enjoyed the film more if they had cut out some of the boat trip, and a couple gratuitous scenes on the island that didn't feature Kong and Ann.

Acting

Jack Black How was the man from School of Rock, Orange County and Saving Silverman in King Kong? If you know anything of Jack Black, you know that he is a riot (Envy notwithstanding) and has a sense of sarcastic and physical comedy. Although the comedy wasn't in this role, the enthusiasm that Black brings to all his film characters was with Carl Dehham. His character didn't come off as cold, just driven and oblivious to the harm he caused his film crew and King Kong. I felt that Black was terrific in the role, and he proved that he doesn't always have to be funny to be good. The glow that Jack Black can create with his eyes was perfect for the character of Carl Denham. His character was more upset when his camera got broken than when three of his crew met unfortunate demises!

Naomi Watts I am sure that Ms. Watts was actually acting to a green screen, which makes her role all the more incredible. Her scenes with Kong were as compelling and as heartfelt as any romance film I have seen (and yes, I have seen more than just True Romance). Although she does scream a few times (and boy does she ever), that is not all she does in this movie by any means. I really enjoyed watching her in this role. Her scenes flirting with King Kong and her anguish at his treatment by the others in the film was very well done.

Adrian Brody I have no fault with Brody as an actor, but in this film, he just didn't quite fit, I think he was too melancholy for the part, too sad and depressed looking, especially considering he was willing to go all the way to Kong's mountain retreat to "rescue" Anne. His character portrayal just didn't convince me that he would do something like that. In fact I wanted Ann to tell him, "go away, I'm with Kong, can't you see that?" Not since Molly Ringwald chose the rich kid over Ducky had I so not wanted the moody quirky character to get the girl. I mean, Brody couldn't even defend Ann from ONE T-Rex, let alone three, and Kong didn't write pretentious boring stage plays.

King Kong Technically it was just Andy Serkis doing that thing with the capture animation, but Kongs' emotional range and acting in the film was great. He really did look like a big gorilla who was hopelessly in love with Ann. Lets face it, if King Kong didn't look real in this film, it would have really affected the way you reacted to it, and King Kong looked real.

CGI The computer generated images in this film were top notch to the point of showing off. Although I could have done without Jurassic Park IV stuck in the middle of the film; where the CGI really shined aside from Kong himself was 1930s New York City. I know the city doesn't look like this today, but watching the movie I felt like they just took their cameras to New York and filmed! In the final battle with Kong atop the Empire State Building, I literally felt dizzy when they shot from the top down perspective.

Soundtrack / Surround Sound The soundtrack at times was almost overpowering and a bit too "this scene is supposed to make us feel this way", but overall it was good. The surround sound effects were terrific. We could hear Kong approaching from behind us through the trees, and then to the side until he appeared on screen. The bats whizzed behind me and to my sides. Use of sound in this movie was excellent, and the sound editing was very well done, this will be a fun one to own on DVD

Summary I don't want to compare it to the original, I like a good remake, and I thought this was a good remake. I enjoyed watching it, the film was entertaining. The acting was good, the special effects were outstanding, and two thirds of the story was very interesting to watch. I leave out one star because the film should have been edited better, a lot of scenes, especially in the beginning, were either unnecessary and boring or in the middle just plain self indulgent showing off. Overall though, this is the sort of film thats great go to the movies eat popcorn giant screen entertainment.