MOVIE REVIEWS
King Kong
Amichai Greene
There are three things I know to be true. Adrian Brody can’t help but be adorable, Naomi Watts can’t help but be gorgeous, and Peter Jackson can’t help but make the most outrageous and breathtaking action sequences.
Thus, if all you care about is Naomi Watts’s sexiness (even when caked with mud, sweaty, running from dinosaurs), Adrian Brody’s adorableness (even when he’s caked with mud running to dinosaurs trying to save Naomi Watts) and jaw dropping mindless action, all tied together with a thin plot involving monkey love, then you should go out right now – before you even finish this ridiculously long sentence – and see this movie.
Just like the original Kong, this one is filled with the most technologically advanced available special effects of the time. What the new one has that the older one doesn’t: about eight-four more minutes. Which is not to say I didn’t like those extra eighty-four minutes, I did only I would have liked them more if there were less of them. I have seen the Lord of the Rings theatrical releases, and I’ve also scene the extended versions. Watching King Kong felt like watching the extended version (albeit an extended version I liked) rather than the regular theatrical release. There are a few too many sub plots that don’t add much to the rest of the story, and some character bits that are entertaining but slow down the plot. Those eighty-four minutes could have been cut to at least to sixty, and we wouldn’t have missed out on a thing.
The action is particularly gruesome. Not gory, there is no blood, but it’s all violent none the less. One particular scene where I couldn’t help but cringe was King Kong killing a T-rex in a very cruel fashion, basically ripping its head open and jamming it into the ground. It was very harsh and quite (as my old fiction professor liked to say) visceral, but maybe I’m a bit too sensitive as all the kids at the ten year old birthday party seated a few seats behind me all broke out in laughter when it happened (their cause for humor at such a disturbing scene made me shudder for entirely different reasons, and fear the future, but that is a different article altogether).
Jack Black, as Director Carl Denham sentimentalizes all the death and destruction for a brief moment then glazes over larger considerations in his quest to make the prefect movie. Peter Jackson pretty much does the same – and I think this is the only real flaw in the film. Perhaps there should have been a disclaimer in the beginning of the picture: “No digital people were actually harmed in the making of this film.” In Jackson’s previous films the action was either for humor (yes black humor and kitsch value count), or had some sort of emotional connection to the audience. In this film, there isn’t enough of either; mindless action for its own sake surprisingly does grate on you, especially after nearly three hours of it.
Here’s what it really boils down to (to use a tool taken from the Donald Rumsfeld playbook). Did I like this movie? Yes I did. Did I think it was too long? Very much so. Should you see this film in a theater? With out a doubt. Is this a must see movie? No, unfortunately it is not.
