Date Posted:16:40:42 12/15/05 Thu Author: Silk Subject: King Kong
Saw this last night. Good, although occasionally contrived and very definitely unnecessarily overlong (187 minute) remake involving Jack Black, as an unscrupulous movie producer, who charters a ship to find Skull Island and film his movie.
About 50 minutes worth of subplot that doesn't go anywhere, staggered establishing shots, beatific panning (the movie could've been called King Pan), and the concentration on CGI which is almost pornographic, could've been cut without affecting the movie at all.
The CGI itself is typically inconsistent. Alone, it works. When it has to interact with the humans it sucks - and some times it really sucks. On the other hand, Kong's emoting (using Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings movies) is great and makes the big ape a sympathetic character.
The performances are generally good, although you have to question the casting of Jack Black. I like Black, but he's not a dramatic actor. The guy has two expressions - manic and ultra-manic, and as he only uses the latter in his comedic roles, he's limited to his one face. All in all, you keep waiting for him to break out into one of his characteristic hyper-tirades.
Naomi Watts as the hapless starlet and Adrien Brody as writer Jack Driscoll are excellent, although the CGI could've surely been used to shorten the latter's nose, which dominates the screen in every medium-to-close-up scene, while supporting cast such as Thomas Kretschmann as the captain of the ship, Evan Parke as his first mate, and Kyle Chandler (from Early Edition) as the star of the movie being made, are all great.
My biggest gripe is Skull Island, which not only is home to Kong, but also dinosaurs, giant bats and insects. Don't the dinosaurs alone make Kong, an ape, just an oddity, instead of a wonder and a rarity?
Anyway, worth seeing, but nobody would blame you if you waited for the DVD version, where Fat'n'Untalented (aka Peter Jackson) will no doubt restore another 45 minutes of story and panning.
