BEFORE: My last two films were about a skyscraper, and a tropical island. Put those two things together, stir in a giant monkey, and you've got "King Kong". Makes sense, right? Especially since Tom Hanks from "Joe Versus the Volcano" links so easily to his son, Colin Hanks, who's got a role in tonight's film - they appeared together in "The Great Buck Howard".
THE PLOT: In 1933, an ambitious movie producer coerces his cast and crew to travel to mysterious Skull Island, where they encounter Kong, a giant ape who is immediately smitten with his leading lady.
AFTER: I've got something of a personal connection to "King Kong", at least to the 1976 remake with Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange and Charles Grodin. That was the first film I remember seeing in a theater that wasn't a Disney film. I was 7 or 8 years old, and my grandfather took me to the movies - later on my mother was furious that I'd seen a film that wasn't rated "G". That may have sparked my interest in movies, and then the next few years brought "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters", and the damage was done.
The 1976 version isn't too bad, if you can get past the anti-oil Greenpeace-y stuff, and ignore the fact that Kong was portrayed by a guy in a monkey suit, when he wasn't a large set of low-rent animatronics (I think they just built a hand and a face, and left the rest up to the viewer's imagination).
Special effects have come a long way since then, which is both good and bad. Good because what we see here is absolutely dazzling - as in "300" and "Watchmen", directors can now control every pixel on the screen, so if they can dream it, it can appear on the screen. Bad because there are no limits, so each blockbuster these days has to outdo the last one, and we get served marathon movies and series like "Harry Potter" and "The Lord of the Rings". They may be spectacular, but they're also somehow less organic and more processed than films used to be.
So we end up with a new version of "Kong" that strains the viewers' attention spans (and their bladders) by being over three hours long. Half of that time is spent on Skull Island, battling one set of CGI creatures after another. By contrast, the classic 1933 film told the same story in just 100 minutes. Sure, it didn't look as great and featured some jerky stop-motion animation, but it wowed audiences AND got them home in time for dinner.
Peter Jackson made the decision to set the film back in the 1930's, rather than make another modernized version. Which is another trade-off - the costuming and references to vaudeville and old-time moviemaking equipment seem kind of hokey, but on the upside, it's nice to see NYC with classic cars and retro marquees, back before every inch of Times Square was covered with hi-def video screens.
It's a stunning visual achievement, no doubt - I'm just not sure they broke any new ground in a narrative sense, despite the added length. They got the scale right, though, as well as the look of NYC as seen from up above - I know I'm going to have that recurring dream tonight where I'm falling off of a tall building.
NITPICK POINT: Kong is the main attraction taken from Skull Island - but what about those dinosaurs? Dinosaurs alive after millions of years thought extinct - isn't that more significant than a giant ape? Talk about burying the lead story... Most people don't remember the dinosaur fight from the original film, so that was a nice touch.
NITPICK POINT #2: Those dinosaurs seem incredibly interested in eating Ms. Darrow - but scale-wise, she couldn't be much more than a tiny morsel. Compared to a T.Rex, she'd be about the size of a chicken wing to a person, and it takes more than a chicken wing to fill me up. And if I dropped a chicken wing, I wouldn't go so far out of my way to get it back, I'd go find a whole chicken.
NITPICK POINT #3: The frenetic action during the fight sequences was a little hard to watch. Plus Kong tossed around Ms. Darrow from hand to hand so many times - any one of those exchanges could have easily snapped her neck.
NITPICK POINT #4: Did we need to see the cast attacked by giant insects 18 times? 2 or 3 times would have sufficed, especially since they get rescued each time the exact same way.
NITPICK POINT #5: Every time someone on Skull Island turned around, there seemed to be a 50-story drop next to them. I understand there needs to be a mountain there, which ties into Kong seeking higher ground on a skyscraper later, but how does a tiny, uncharted island get to be so darn big?
NITPICK POINT #6: In the 1976 version, Kong is conveniently transported back to New York inside a giant empty oil tanker - this made a lot of sense. This remake never really tells us how they got Kong back to New York. I think he was bigger than their entire boat, so how did that happen?
Starring Jack Black (last seen in "Shallow Hal"), Naomi Watts, Adrien Brody (last heard in "Fantastic Mr. Fox"), Jamie Bell (last seen in "Flags of Our Fathers"), Kyle Chandler (last seen in "The Day the Earth Stood Still"), Andy Serkis (in a dual role as a ship crewman AND as the motion-capture model for Kong), with cameos from director Peter Jackson, Frank Darabont, make-up legend Rick Baker, and composer Howard Shore.
RATING: 6 out of 10 biplanes
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