King Kong (2005) Reviews

• A 10-star 2-hour movie screaming to get out of a 7-star 3-hour movie

  BuddyBoy19612006-01-17

  Let me be the first to admit that there's nothing wrong with a long movie, nothing at all. "Titanic" was a long movie that was as exactly as long as it needed to be. "Gone with the Wind" was a really long movie that was exactly as long as it needed to be. "Dances with Wolves" was a long movie that I wish had been even longer when I saw it in the theater. But "King Kong"? Phhewww...this sucker clocks in at least 30-60 minutes longer than it needs to be. While it played, I kept inadvertently thinking to myself, "Boy, we really should be out to sea by now...they haven't reached the island yet?...man, are they EVER gonna find Ann?...jeez, when are we gonna go back to Manhattan already?..." and so on. Hand to God--I actually yawned twice during the last third of this movie. I even closed my eyes for a second before I realized, 'hey...you can't just rewind this when you wake up!' Sure, many scenes in "King Kong" were thrilling (e.g., LOVED the T-Rex sequence) and, yes, I even teared up a little a couple of times. And I must say, Kong himself was beautifully realized--he looked and acted like a REAL gorilla (albeit a tiny bit anthropomorphized)! But I gotta tell you...I was more relieved than exhilarated when this movie ended. (If I saw one more flyover of the native village, I was gonna scream!) Peter...baby...why spend so much time developing all these extraneous secondary characters if you don't really have much closure with them by the end. For example, the ship's captain and Jimmy...once we leave Skull Island...pfffftttt...we never them again. Why all the backstory scenes about them? As with the original version, Jackson should have concentrated simply on the four main characters throughout: Kong, Ann, Driscoll and Denham. Period. The problem is Jackson tried to make an epic out of a thriller, when these two approaches are generally exclusive to each other. The original "Kong" MOVED because it was simply a thriller and content to be so, but Jackson's remake starts and stops, and starts and stops, and starts and stops, merely frustrating the thrillseeker in us that wants to keep going every time Jackson establishes some momentum. But instead Jackson pauses to "delve" or "explore" or "elaborate" a la David Lean or something like that. One can excuse Jackson for shooting so much material for the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy--consider the rich source material . But how anyone could have taken the 100-minute original and nearly doubled it for a remake has far too much memory on his Mac. He should have saved all the extra footage (and I'm betting there's a LOT more we didn't see in the theatrical cut) for the DVD release as he did for LOTR. Mr. Jackson's first priority as a filmmaker (well, all filmmakers) is to present the most appropriate cut for THEATRICAL audiences during the film's initial exhibition in theaters. In this case, more WAS less. Much shorter movies in the past have had intermissions! Honestly, though I certainly enjoyed "King Kong", I really have no desire to see this movie again--I just couldn't bring myself to sit through all the filler just to get to the good parts. How I wish Jackson and/or Universal would consider releasing a 2-hour DVD version. Hey, it's happened before, so what's the harm? Inside of a year there'll be 17 versions out on DVD anyway...what's one more? But having to sit through a 3-4 hour DVD version someday? I'll take a pass. Do I recommend seeing "King Kong"? Of course. You'll probably enjoy it immensely, despite it's overlength. But if you do go, by all means lay off the Jumbo Coke until at least 90 minutes in! You'll thank me later.

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• Beauty Killed the Beast

  nycritic2006-01-10

  If the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy cemented Peter Jackson as a director of the highest order and made him the new king of the world, KING KONG seals his position as a Director and eliminates any trace of doubt that he may have been a one hit wonder. Bringing what has to be one of the most known and greatest adventure story into a new configuration, and doing so successfully, is a tremendous gamble. Dino de Laurentiis tried to do so thirty years before, and while the film is watchable, it was considered a major disaster. An unrelated sequel, KING KONG LIVES, proved even worse. Peter Jackson, who has called KING KONG the reason he decided to get into film-making, wanted to make this film before LORD OF THE RINGS was thrown into production, but circumstances prevented this in happening, and thus his career went into high gear as we now know. Maybe it's just as best that things went this way: the sensitivity and emotional power that his saga of Middle Earth makes its way into the Modern Age and elevates this incredible action-packed adventure into the spiritual heights that its climactic sequence requests. The argument, which resembles a massive Stephen King novel in epic proportion and in the way it introduces each of its characters, is as follows: Carl Denham (Jack Black, channeling Orson Welles) is trying to get his movie off the floor, but producers aren't quite backing him up with his latest project which is to be set in the distant Skull Island. On top of this, leading ladies are scarce, and one who would have been available (Fay, in a nod to the late Fay Wray) is working for an RKO production. Ann Darrow (a radiant, multi-faceted Naomi Watts) is a vaudeville performer who is nearly destitute: the theatre where she works has closed and she is practically stealing to eat. Darrow and Denham cross paths in the Depression era Times Square, and envisioning her as his muse, he convinces her to join his production team as his lead actress. At the same time, Denham bamboozles playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) to join his team as screenwriter, and with Captain Englehorn (Thomas Krestchmann) on helm, off they sail to Skull Island (while the entire crew believes they are heading to the more exotic location of Singapore). As they arrive they get glimpses of the island's forbidding nature: stone faces in the style of Christmas Island's, but savage and menacing, are all over the place, and the island at first seems deserted. A little girl catches their attention and in trying to ingratiate themselves to her they are assaulted by bloodthirsty savages that all but decimate their crew and capture Darrow for the purpose of sacrificing her to (whom they believe to be) the ruler of the island, a twenty-five foot gorilla named Kong (a brilliant Andy Serkis). Not wanting to leave Ann abandoned in the island the crew comes back to rescue her and in the process discover that Kong is the least of their troubles: the island is infested with prehistoric life. It's at this point when KING KONG bursts into non-stop action and Peter Jackson pulls out every hat trick into an hour of chase sequences and truly gory moments involving gigantic insects and man-eating worms. The only moment when the action in the forefront seems somewhat divorced from the background is the sequence where the entire crew faces a stampede of brontosauruses and raptors, but even then it is mind blowing in its sheer scope and is only the set-up to what will be the film's finest hour and the very reason moviegoers know Kong: the return to New York City and the inevitable, symbolic climax atop the Empire State Building in which the New World clashes with the Old World. Even so, KING KONG is equally excellent in establishing its mood in four quiet moments. Who could have thought Ann could charm a beast like Kong? Here is the fulcrum of the story, not a love story but a story of kindred spirits. Ann, after fighting Kong, wins him over with her vaudeville act seen at the film's introduction. Witness his facial and body language: Kong is not a beast but an overgrown child full of wonderment and laughter at seeing her dance. Later, after a physically exhausting moment when Kong fights off three T-Rexes, both share a sunset atop a cliff, mirrored in the sunrise they witness, together, at the Empire State Building later on. But by far, the most magical moment is one in which Kong, in New York, slides through a frozen lake in Central Park, Ann in tow, both laughing. Genius at its best. Kong at his most tender. KING KONG is a testament to movie magic that action films, even those which remake classics, can benefit from an emotional center. In reconstructing what was a one-dimensional story from its 1933 version with his evolving Ann Darrow's relationship with Kong from hostage to friend and even kindred spirit who sees the beauty within the beast, his version is the more complete, and its length brings the rewards of a fascinating film. I only imagine what he would do in re-creating the world of THE WIZARD OF OZ despite the shrieks of purists who would see such a thing as celluloid blasphemy, forgetting that remakes are necessary, and if done with an expert vision, can create transcendental beauty. And this is absolute beauty.

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• Total Monkey Dung!

  jadortmunder2006-01-18

  I hardly know where to begin. I had such high hopes for this film. I felt that Jackson was a good choice to reinterpret the story and there are brief flashes of what I was hoping for salted throughout the film, but they are few and far between. And what they are hidden in is as big a mess as I've ever seen. Many of my biggest complaints are covered by other reviewers - too long; pointless characters and subplots that conveniently disappear; bad CGI scenes; lousy dialog; utterly inappropriate attempts at comedy relief; stupidly contrived situations where people absorb physical punishment that would cripple or kill a trained stuntman, but they just jump up and carry on as if nothing happened; inane inconsistencies (Watts in winter with no coat doesn't shiver on Empire State, ape that pulls down theater balcony can skate on thin ice, etc); the abominable performance by Jack (I can't act to save my life) Black; and, worst of all, the mind-bogglingly idiotic concept of having her love the ape more than she loves the guy. But here's a couple of things I didn't see mentioned (and I only made it in about 200 reviews before crying Uncle, so if someone did catch these, I apologize): When they first go ashore to investigate the village, nobody thinks to bring a weapon? Are you kidding me? One of the only bits of dialog retained from the original film is the "scene" Denham shoots with Ann Darrow and the ham actor recreating Fay Wray and Bruce Cabot's scene where Driscoll tells Ann that women are bad luck on a ship. Then, the new film takes pains to assure us that this was not the deathless dialog of playwright Brody/Driscoll but a bit of cheese made up on the spot by the ham "playing" the film-within-a-film's first mate. It's odd, but in every one of the few instances that Jackson (who calls himself a big fan of the original) references the first film, he does so in the most disrespectful manner possible, as if to say, "Yes, wasn't that a quaint, creaky old piece of junk I used as the basis for my superior cinematic achievement?" Only problem is that quaint old film is a classic and will still be entertaining audiences long after this new pile of dreck has mercifully faded away. And about the ham actor - hasn't anyone ever taught Jackson that one of the most important rules of good cinematic storytelling is that a character undergoes a change in the tale but only once. The ham goes from sniveling coward to avenging Rambo on a vine with a tommy-gun, back to sniveling coward whenever it suits the plot. I could go on but to what purpose. I've already given this film more time than it deserves and if you haven't gotten the point by now, you probably never will. But there is one last thing I'd like to address and it's the issue of suspension of disbelief. I'm a pretty agreeable guy when it comes to buying into a film's universe. If you let me know up front that in this movie, pigs can fly, then I say fine, fly those pigs. But the filmmaker has to hold up his side of the bargain. And if his film is poorly conceived and badly made, before long, I'm going to be looking at those flying pigs (and every other element in the film) with a far more critical eye. This leads us to a complaint I saw mentioned several times in the reviews I read where folks were incensed that Jackson skipped over the process of getting Kong on the ship and then showing the journey back to New York. But if you look at the original, it's done the same way. Denham talks about Kong's name being up in lights, how they'll all be millionaires, how he'll share it with all of them and BANG! we're back in NY outside a theater advertising the appearance of Kong - Eighth Wonder Of The World. The difference is: in the original, we're caught up in the story, entranced and ensnared, we willingly follow wherever the film leads us because we are under its spell. But in the new one, many of us have been looking at our watches for an hour or more. We're fed up with a boatload of unlikable characters acting like morons and monsters who act just as dumb. We're in a hurry to get this over with, but we know we're not going anywhere for a while so we resort to the time-honored sport of the bored film-goer - we start picking apart every single thing we see. And that's really it in a nutshell. We didn't care. Jackson, for all his supposed gifts and his love for the first film, couldn't involve us. The good reviews this film has received baffle me. The only answer I can come up with is that a lot of people have been taught to have diminished expectations from their entertainment. Make it enough like a video game and they think it's fine. But it's not fine to anyone who grew up in the grip of great storytellers. I had supposed Peter Jackson might be such a storyteller. If, in fact, he is, then this is no more than a woeful misstep. But it is so poor, one is forced to entertain the thought that this is the true Peter Jackson - a hack with too much money and not enough talent. What a bitter disappointment this film is.

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• Truly A Masterpiece!

  BigHardcoreRed2005-12-15

  Let me just say that with all of the remakes that have been coming out, King Kong may have been the most deserving and the most in need of being remade. I could not think of a better director for this type of film than Peter Jackson. King Kong stays pretty true to the original. Naomi Watts plays Fay Wray's Ann Darrow perfectly. Right down to her emotional connection with Kong, which is helped by the fact that Kong is pretty darn lovable when he is not ripping apart dinosaurs. Adrien Brody plays a great Jack Driscoll as well. Brody is truly a gifted actor and plays a good hero. Even Jack Black did a good job as the rebellious director Carl Denham. Usually I am annoyed by Black's performances, even though they are mostly in comedies. Surprisingly, Black kept his character serious and the movie is better for it. I though for sure he would be the one to ruin this movie for me but, again, I stand corrected. The comedy seemed to be reserved for Kong, himself, and did a wonderful job. I can not express how much more I enjoyed this movie without the "guy in the suit" special effects. Kong was very appealing visually, as well as the other dinosaurs. I do not say this too much in reviews. In fact, I doubt I have ever said it but King Kong has turned out to be a masterpiece which will raise the bar for many years to come. 10/10

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• Over Hyped

  flame2ie2006-01-10

  This has to be one of the most over-hyped movies of all time, a veritable 'King Kong' of a movie deflated to Bubbles the chimp stature with its wooden acting, naff sequences, contrived plot and extreme length. As the saying goes 'its not how big you are but how you use it!" Unfortunately Mr. Jackson feels the need to release onto us the Bigger, Longer and Uncut version from the get go. To wade into this movie is to find yourself in a jungle but in the end having sifted through everything all you get is a monkey-nut. To begin with its one basic flaw is that its too long by far, over an hour too long. Jackson feels the need to show us all Ann Darrows workmates at the theatre one by one. He develops them to a point where you're thinking they're going to be integral to the story and then he swiftly moves, he does it with the crew of Venture. Lots of scenes with them, pointless in the end especially when they die, they just seem like cannon fodder for our amusement. There is just too much of everything in King Kong. Too many characters to begin with, too many natives, too many monsters, Kong fights off not one, not two, but three t-rex's at the same time. Denham and Driscoll are not attacked by one or two big bugs, but a gazillion of them. At this point I was shaking my fist at the screen Its as if Jackson sat in a suite at Weta, like a kid in a candy store and said, I'll have two those, ten of those, seven of those and twelve of those etc etc. Too much, quality not quantity Mr. Jackson. There are some cringe worthy moments too, especially in the dinosaur chase scene, with Adrien Brody punching, yes punching a Velociraptor (Steven must be laughing extremely loudly) in the face all the while not trying to get stamped on by some brontosaurus , gimme a break. The scenes between Ann and Kong begin funny, but turn stupid as Jackson has some how turned the beast of Kong into a docile and almost human like character, I was half expecting the pair to get down to some frantic love-making by the end of it, cringe, cringe cringe. I could go on and on and on, oh I could, but the most glaring contrivance occurs at the very beginning when we are cheated out of an explanation. Denham played by Jack Black is trying to convince his film financiers to give him more money, but having seen his rushes they're not convinced. However, Denham pulls from his pocket a map no less, of Skull Island, a map nobody else has, annnnnd thats it. No back-story, no 'where did he get that map' no dodgy Asian guy in a pawn shop, no mystic Mr. Miagi, no cults, no Nazis, no nothing. Denham just has the map, the map on which the whole movie rests, a poor downtrodden director has this map, where did he get it!!!!!! Is that to be saved for King Kong 2: Son of Kong, I guess so, but I'll be in no rush to see that, but I was in a rush to leave the theatre to avoid the 17, yes SEVENTEEN minute end credits.

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