King Kong

It's hard to pin down what to say about Peter Jackson's King Kong, partly because, as some of the other reviewers have said, it is really more than one movie.

I will begin with a short review; if you want to read more than just a brief opinion, read on past this paragraph:

This movie was overlong. The action sequences on Skull Island are, more or less, Peter Jackson's remake of Jurassic Park, with slightly different fauna. The fights between huge beasts, as well as between humans and all sorts of other beasts, are breathtaking, and a special effects triumph. Around this tremendous action sequence, Jackson has added a larger shell -- scenes that attempt to elevate King Kong beyond the Godzilla genre. In this, he is less successful. King Kong is still worth seeing for the visuals, but the action fans will be yawning for half the movie, while people looking for the mushy middle may be put off by the gore and large-animal fights.

Longer thoughts:

The movie comes in three parts: we get about an hour of establishing the main characters and getting them on a ship to the South Pacific. The primary characters are Jack Black as Carl Denham, a huckster / movie producer, Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow, an out of work vaudeville actress, and Adrien Brody as Jack Driscoll, a playwright. All three stars do a creditable job in this movie -- I was not wowed by any them, but didn't walk out wondering, as one does with, say, Keanu Reeves, why anyone would cast them in a movie.

Part two is Jurassic Park: the cast sets off on Skull Island, and we get about an hour and a half of action sequences among big beasties and medium beasties and creepies and crawlies and stompies and chompies. This part is probably the best part of the movie, partly because it is most at peace with what King Kong is: an action flick. There's little details to quibble with -- how can humans and 20-foot dinosaurs run through a canyon for several minutes without the humans getting either stomped or outrun? Why would a huge dinosaur abandon a large piece of prey it just killed to chase after the comparatively minuscule Naomi Watts? But these are just nitpicks. Jackson knows how to do action, and he does it very well.

Part three is back in New York, with the famed Empire State Building figuring prominently in the conclusion. This part is key in trying to show a budding understanding between the starlet and the big ape.

Jackson, most famous for the epic Lord Of The Rings movies, has taken a similarly leisurely approach here, massaging the elements of the story into place. This approach has not benefitted him here, I believe, because of a key difference between LOTR and King Kong: the former was a story of tremendous depth, and every minute of the film could draw on that depth to add detail from the book. All of the characters were thought through -- everyone had a background and motivations. King Kong, at heart, is a dopey story about a big ape. Sure, there is the angle of the misunderstood beast, and Jackson explores it. But what's the story about, really? Interfering with nature? The aforementioned misunderstood beast? The dangers of hucksterism?

When you add depth where none existed, you end up with that weird sensation of having seen an over-polished (though not over-edited) show that seemed epic, but really wasn't once you walk out and start thinking about it. In trying to elevate King Kong above the limits of the genre, Jackson may have aimed too high.