King Kong

Created expressly for today's audiences by New Zealander Peter Jackson, the newest version of 'King Kong' gives us a most realistic and humanoid giant ape, a smart and spunky heroine, a meatier storyline that's (happily) set in the same period as the original…and also miles upon miles of unneeded extra CGI (computer-generated imagery). It's 'Jurassic Park' meets 'Perfect Storm' meets (Cocteau's, not Disney's) 'Beauty and the Beast'. (For those living under a rock, Mr Jackson is best known for bringing us 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy.)

This latest Kong adventure is set in motion by the manic ambition of filmmaker Carl Denham. On learning that money is to be cut by his unhappy financiers, he hightails it out of New York City with his small crew and the cops in delayed pursuit, hopping onto an especially chartered ship. The vessel is a rusty, oversized tugboat/steamer called the Venture, steered by Capt. Englehorn with his motley crew (a tall black man and his young sidekick, a Chinese not-a-cook with Manchu-style hat and tunic, a bearish cook, among others). Before casting off, Denham has made sure he's also got Ann Darrow, a vaudeville performer very much down on her luck, along for the trip. Darrow is Denham's last-minute replacement for the actress who's suddenly withdrawn from the project. Reluctantly leaving New York with Denham is his playwright-scriptwriter friend, Jack Driscoll. Oh, and Ann Darrow just happens to be a major Driscoll fan – providing an opportunity for an embarrassing first encounter for Ann with Driscoll.

So far, a promising start. Our shipboard mates head out to God-knows-where to film Denham's movie. Actually, Denham knows the real destination, and when the crew find out they balk, having heard stories of people who land on this spooky spot, never to return. Everyone else on board is clueless. Soon enough, the compass goes nuts, the ship is caught in a pea-soup thick fog amid sharp rocks and turbulent waters. The Venture ends up hitting (literally) the craggy, rocky outcrop strewn with assorted bones: the dreaded Skull Island.

On land we get to meet the natives - dark-skinned primitives with sharpened teeth, red eyes and a really bad hair day as the baddy-ignoramuses who worship the giant gorilla Kong, King of the island. Of course, the Merian C. Cooper-Edgar Wallace story requires that it be so, but seeing the glamourous beauty of the sacrificial blonde contrasted with the forbidding and evil look of the fear-crazed natives still cast a slight pall on my suspension of disbelief for its decided un-PC-ness…but might I just be too sensitive about such things, even as I stupidly succumb to the premise of it all? What's an intellectual hypocrite to do?

Then again, sometimes a fictional, frightening tribal character is just a fictional, frightening tribal character, and a blonde in peril in a strange island is just a blonde in peril in a strange island!

Once past these story-bound cliches, the action goes into high gear with loads of CGI thrown at you. Perhaps too enamoured of the fancy footage, Mr Jackson lets a few sequences get out of hand, to wit: the brontosaurus/velociraptor stampede, the gorilla-dinosaur fight scenes, the arthropod and slimy sea cucumber assault (with implausible injury-free semi-automatic gunfire involving Adrien Brody and some overgrown insects), and back in New York, Kong and his tiny charge skating on a frozen lake in Manhattan. The picture should have been whittled down to some two-and-a-half hours, instead of the unwieldy three-hours-and-seven-minutes on tap. Not especially fun either is the generic action film score composed by James Newton Howard that saturates the entire picture and numbed my ears after a while.

So what's there to like? Well, a lot!

There's Jack Black ('High Fidelity'), for starters. His wild-eyed, single-minded and sleazy Carl Denham offers comic relief. Out of the thin part written for Denham Mr Black creates a fairly amusing character. If only the writers (Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Mr Jackson) had given him more meat into which to sink his teeth. For instance, when he loses not one, but two crewmen on Skull Island, the black humour in his lines draws only weak chuckles from the audience.

Playing effete playwright Jack Driscoll, Adrien Brody's ('The Pianist') wan smile and droopy eyes do grow on one after some time, but his is a thankless role. We don't cheer him on despite his sincere and physically demanding heroics for Ann's sake. Yes, he gets the girl in the end, but only by default. Too bad for him, Kong is really Ann's real love - he's only saved her life a few times, and she's gleaned the gentle innocence within the big, scary, hairy beast.

The supporting cast do well with their small roles. As Capt. Englehorn, Thomas Kretschmann's character could easily be dismissed as just another generic ship captain. However, Mr Kretschmann (of the sparkling steel blue eyes, impressive in his brief appearance in Polanski's 'The Pianist' and his fine work in 'Stalingrad') makes the captain into a scruffy, jaded, no-nonsense, Humphrey Bogart-like type who's just got a job to do and does it (while looking pretty damn attractive in the process; is my bias showing?).

Clean-cut and boyish Colin Hanks plays Preston, Denham's straight-arrow assistant and ultimately, his conscience. Kyle Chandler (whose screen name could very well be a Thirties nom de film) plays cinematic hero Bruce Baxter with tongue lodged firmly in cheek. As Hayes, the wise and dignified Evan Parke looms large like Mark Twain's Big Jim, and shows a paternal concern for trouble-prone Huck Finnesque Jimmy (Jamie Bell). Lobo Chan has little more to do than speak Chinese-accented English in his role as Choy, and Andrew Serkis (of LOTR's 'Gollum' fame) does double duty as Lumpy, the cook, and of course, as the big, giant Kong himself.

Certainly, the CGI sophistication is impressive. Gone are the jerky gestures and the moving patches of fur visible on the 1933 film. Kong looks authentic and pleasantly anthropomorphic. (But more about him later.) On those beefy dinosaurs, you can see the muscles rippling beneath their skins as they run amuck and battle ferociously with one another. (Whether the real dinosaurs were as agile on their feet as these computer-generated creatures are is debatable.) The bright lights of re-created 1930s Manhattan were a real treat as well (I love the pre-Code films of the Thirties), even if I can't swear to the authenticity of every neon sign and building on display.

Most of all, there's the central core of the tale that keeps this behemoth of a film afloat: Naomi Watts's turn as Ann Darrow, and her wordless interaction with Andrew Serkis as Kong. Looking like a softer version of Nicole Kidman, Ms Watts (' 21 Grams', 'Mulholland Drive', 'Brides of Christ') lights up the screen with a quiet incandescence. Her winsome Ann is touched with melancholy (Denham tells her, 'Look at you! You're the saddest girl I've ever met!') but lacks the usual schmaltz. She's no weak damsel in distress: once over her initial fear of Kong, she does a vaudeville bit in a bid to soothe the scary Beast whose little finger could easily squish her to a pulp. She deserves some props, considering that she acts and reacts in reality to…oh, usually nothing - certainly not the giant ape and dinosaurs we see in close proximity to her on film. At best it's Andrew Serkis standing in for Kong, but more often it's a blue matte screen. Whatever fondness we later feel for the 25-foot gorilla rests largely on Ms Watts's intelligent and compassionate portrayal of Ann Darrow. (And for those expecting the shriek-fest that Fay Wray had to dub in for the original, no more than one, perhaps two short, piercing, screams are all you get from Ms Watts.)

For his part, Kong's humongously expressive brown eyes reflect a childlike curiosity. He is amused no end by flicking and poking his finger at his new, Barbie-like toy. When he looks away from his tiny friend with a pout, he expresses a human-like hurt. However, he's really still an untamed gorilla, and thus pounds his chest and roars with a macho bluster every now and then. When Kong picks up every yellow-haired female he spots in the streets of New York in search of 'his' blonde, well, it's funny and poignant all at once. His tragic but inevitable end might even leave a lump in some extra-sentimental throats.

Reflective moments and hushed scenes of unspoken joy rarely make it into action pictures, so I warmly welcomed the quiet parts in the film. When Ann Darrow says the potentially cheesy line, 'Its beautiful!' on two occasions, and later reaches out to pat the leathery cheek of Kong, it's actually touching, and doesn't feel as manipulative as it sounds. (Okay, so I'm a sap - sometimes.)

So, sure, see this for the special effects of which you've heard, read and seen so much. The breathtaking panoramic vistas of the New Zealand locations don't hurt. Note that the spectacular visuals require viewing on nothing smaller than the theatre screen. (You might just feel exhausted from stumbling through the jungle, falling down ravines, and fighting off predators for far too long and far too often with our besieged cast on Skull Island - the actors must've shed significant poundage on the shoot.) In all, despite the overdose of CGI fight and chase scenes, deafening thunderous noise and wall-to-wall music, the acting of most everyone – Kong certainly included - goes beyond the wooden stage, and the central love story is appealingly told. This imperfect 'King Kong' stands above its peers and makes for rather enjoyable escapist fare at the movies – just as it ought to be.