King Kong: The Decision ’08 Review
Well, just got back…as you’ve heard by now, it’s a LOOOONG movie. That’s the major criticism; by the time the third act rolls around, a bit of weariness sets in, as some of the emotional triggers are reached for once too often. The film also takes about 15 minutes too long to get going in the first act.
Having said that, the second act is about as perfect as can be; the action sequences on Skull Island set a new bar that will probably stand until the next Peter Jackson epic. Jackson goes for the money shot so many times that you can almost imagine him giddily saying, “And then, we’ll make that spectacular sequence look like kid’s stuff! How about if we…” and on and on in a game of No Limit Texas Movie-Making where the audience goes broke thinking he’s GOTTA be bluffing this time.
Kong is a technological marvel, and Naomi Watts makes the most of a part that starts strong, but ends with one too many longing looks at the ape. Adrien Brody is mostly wasted, and Jack Black is perhaps miscast, though he does have his moments.
That may sound like a lot of carping, and perhaps it is, but there’s a lot of movie here, and maybe the critics who say Jackson needs a strong editor are right (but then again, who’s going to say no to Peter Jackson after the triumph of the Lord of the Rings?). The good stuff is so good, however, that you will truly miss out if you wait and see this one on DVD (unless you have a 100-inch high-definition plasma set – and you don’t, now, do you?).
My rating? 9.3 out of 10…
I think I’ll wait for the book.
Seriously, I remember watching the original (and other horror flicks) on “Chiller Theater” on Saturday nights after the eleven o’clock news. Me, my oldest brother and my mother would sit up until three-thirty a.m., eating Sicilian pizza, drinking cherry soda pop (my mother drank Pepsi) and watching everything from “Frankenstein”, “Dracula”, “Wolfman”, “The Mummy” (the originals!) et.al. to such Grade-Z howlers as “Plan 9 From Outer Space” by the inimitable Ed Wood. Ahhh, those were the days.
No offense meant to Peter Jackson, and maybe one of these days (if I ever buy a TV set and a DVD player) I’ll catch up to the LOTR. But not “King Kong”, I don’t think. It just wouldn’t be the same.
I liked LOTR, but that was a combination of great visuals and a sweeping storyline. It’s hard for me to get interested in a storyline about a giant gorilla, no matter how good the visuals.
Interesting that he dragged out the movie in this one. In Return of the King, he did the same thing. It seemed like he couldn’t settle on one emotional ending, so he put them all in.
The funny thing about LOTR? The very first battle scene which is showing the hx of the ring, was awesome and I asked myself…how much better can the fighting scenes get?
They didn’t get better, they just used more computer enhancement from that point on…
Bah!!!
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[...] My second favorite movie of the year was Peter Jackson’s epic King Kong, a movie that suffered because of its excessive length and over-the-top expectations that it could never fulfill (Kong came in 5th in yearly box office). Kong is up for 4 Oscars tonight – not bad, but if it had been more tightly edited, it might have been a contender…My review of the movie can be found here… _______________________________________________________________ [...]
[...] Mine, and Lileks (not a fair fight, of course – Lileks’ review is more entertaining than the last three movies I’ve seen combined – even if you take out the boring parts… [...]