"That's a nice-a donut."

Wednesday, December 28, 2005


King Kong (2005)

In Peter Jackson's King Kong, one ongoing subplot in the middle of the film involves a young deckhand on a ship and his older and wiser coworker. The youth had lived a troubled life and was just finding his way in the world, and the elder was acting sort of as his mentor. Along the way, the young seamen starts reading Joseph Conrad's classic novel "Hearts of Darkness" and the mentor coolly notes that their journey is just like that in the book: it is also a trek in which people are drawn towards something, even though their mind is telling them to turn around. It is somewhat ironic since director Jackson also succumbed to the journey and ended up making an otherwise very good movie that is simply way too long for its own good.

Kong, which is the second remake of the classic monster movie from 1933, is structured in such a way that it contains three very distinct parts - or three "halves" of a movie. Also set in 1933, the first half of the movie concentrates on movie director/producer Carl Denham (Jack Black) and his quest to film his next movie. He enlists his star writer (Adrien Brody), down-on-her-luck actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), and the rest of his crew and, despite admonishments from the studio, they leave on a chartered boat in search of the mysterious Skull Island. The second portion of the movie begins once they find the island, in a series of action-filled set pieces that (perhaps intentionally) resemble some of those in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park. There the crew finds a plethora of prehistoric and out-of-this-world creatures including King Kong, dinosaurs, and plenty of giant and gruesome man-eating bugs. To make things worse, the island natives kidnap Ann as a sacrifice for Kong and yada yada... the beast falls in love with her. In the third half of the movie, we end up back in New York City, where the Eighth Wonder of the World goes berserk and climbs the Empire State Building with Ann.

Jackson deftly handles both intense action and the staging of a romance that could have been unintentionally comical in less skilled hands. A woman who falls in love with a giant ape? That has "grade-Z, straight-to-TV" written all over it (and would likely be too hokey for even the Sci-Fi Channel). But somehow it works. By the end of the day you care about Ann, you believe that she really has feelings for the hairy creature, and you even hope that the creature makes it out alive (even though you know that won't happen). Certainly some of that can be attributed to the excellent special effects, including how realistic Kong looks. If they hadn't already, Weta has firmly established themselves as the world's best movie effects company; no disrespect meant to LucasFilm. And of course the use of Andy Serkis (who also has a visible role in the film as one of the ship's men), who stood in for Gollum in the Lord of the Rings series, to motion capture the great ape probably helped to breathe even more life to the creature.

Most of the other characters in the movie have less depth to them though. First, the island natives are kind of an afterthought after the initial skirmishes on Skull Island. And Brody is perhaps underused as the writer; or maybe he is actually overused, trapped in a role in a movie that didn't need him. But Black, while perhaps not the ideal choice to pay the selfish movie director, isn't nearly as bad as others are suggesting - he fits the needs of the role anyway.

King Kong is a fairly exciting movie. As much as I generally dislike remakes, this could easily be called a "reinvention." But it also easily could have cut 30 minutes or more and the movie would have been just as effective - while having the great benefit of being shorter and more succinct. Only a select few movies can seamlessly fly past the 150-minute mark without an afterthought. Is Jackson simply hell-bent on creating one epic after another? Either way, if the length is the worst you can say about a movie, then it's on pretty good standing. Spielberg set the stage for artists like Jackson, and while this doesn't rise to the level of Spielberg at his peak such as in Duel, Jaws, or Indiana Jones, Jackson has proven himself to be the surest thing in directing today. I'd just like to see him tackle a smaller film next.

The Verdict: B+.

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