*WARNING* This review contains some spoilers, so if you don't want to know what happens in King Kong, don't read anymore!

 

 

 

As you surely know, King Kong is about a giant monkey who climbs the Empire State Building. Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) directed this newest version, which is the reason I was interested in it.

The movie is set in the 1930s, the same time the original film was made. I thought this was a nice touch, but the film failed to capture the spirit of the Great Depression. All the characters seemed to have 2005 personalities in 1931 clothes.

For the first thirty minutes are downright boring. The plot is being set up, characters are being developed, and Jack Black swears a lot, but it all goes veeeeeeeery sloooooooowly. Carl (Jack Black) is a movie director with a map to "Skull Island" [insert foreboding drum music here]. He thinks this would be the perfect place to shoot a movie, so he recruits Anne (pretty blond chick), Jack (script-writer guy), and some stuffed-shirt actor. Then he loads them on a boat chocked full of minor characters, who will be eaten by giant bugs in later scenes.

After a loooooooong boat trip, during which Jack falls in love with Anne, they finally arrive at Skull Island. The ship runs aground on some rocks, and Carl rows to shore with the actors and camera men.

The island is inhabited by creepy natives who like to impale things. Anne is kidnapped by the natives and "sacrificed" to Kong. Jack and Carl take some minor characters and go after her.

Anne spends a lot of time running around in a skimpy night dress and being attacked by dinosaurs. No doubt this will be great in the video game, but by the third time she narrowly escapes death at the claws of something prehistoric and scaley, you start to get a little bored.

Much the same thing happens to Carl and Jack; with minor characters getting flung of cliffs, eaten alive by worms, trampled by dinosaurs, and bashed to pieces by Kong.

Right about the time Anne figures out Kong is really just a big softy, Carl and the boat captain capture him. Then we cut to New York, two months later. Carl is making big money off of selling tickets to gawk at Kong, while everybody else involved is either dead or filled with angst. Kong escapes from his puny chains, and storms through New York. Eventually he climbs the Empire State Building, gets shot, falls off, and dies.

The special effects in this movie are amazing. You can barely tell Kong, the dinosaurs, or anything else is CGI. I had a hard time picking out what was a set and what was a blue screen.

The acting is wonderful, nothing sounded forced or corny, except maybe Jack’s last line at the very end. For a movie about a giant monkey, the characters are surprisingly well-developed and three-dimensional; even the minor crew members who get killed off have interesting personalities.

While some scenes are scary and leave you clutching your seat, others are funny and heartwarming. Still others drag, and drag, and drag, without any discernible point.

Overall, King Kong is not a bad movie. If the idea of a giant monkey running around New York appeals to you, this is definitely your movie. Peter Jackson has managed to take a plot that sounds a bit comical and turn it in a great film.  My only complaints would be that the first forty-five minutes go by very slowly, and the whole Anne-runs-around-in-the-jungle-and-gets-crawled-upon-by-everything-creepy deal goes on for too long.

So, go see King Kong, but don’t sit behind the guy who’s seen every version ever made and wants to discuss them all with his girlfriend.