The Eighth Wonder of the World is alive and well and living on Skull Island, when he isn’t occupying his penthouse in Manhattan. This could only be Kong, the giant ape first awakened in the classic 1933 film “King Kong” and the flop 1976 remake.
The lovesick gorilla has been re-animated by director Peter Jackson, cashing in his considerable “Lord of the Rings” clout. Jackson has claimed the 1933 picture as his favorite movie, a formative childhood experience that made him want to become a filmmaker. The new remake is his dream project.
“King Kong” may be a dream to some. For others, it will simply be the occasion for sleep. This 187-minute picture is a foolhardy and mystifyingly drawn-out movie.
| Exhausting: Peter Jackson’s 187-minute remake of his favorite movie is a mystifyingly drawn-out movie, rife with eye-filling spectacle but off key. Kong himself, created through computer animation, is an impressive creation, but overall the film is exhausting. With Naomi Watts, Jack Black.
Rated: PG-13 rating is for violence. Now showing: Everett 9, Galaxy 12, Loews at Alderwood, Marysville 14, Mountlake 9, Meridian 16, Neptune, Oak Tree, Woodinville 12, Cascade, Oak Harbor Plaza 3 |
Jackson wrote the film with his “LOTR” writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. They’ve set the film in 1933, insuring lots of Depression-era flavor and a finale atop the Empire State Building.
Naomi Watts plays Ann Darrow, a down-on-her-luck actress who accepts an exotic offer from filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black): Come away on a tramp steamer and make a movie in the South Seas. He doesn’t say anything about the tallest, darkest leading man she’ll ever meet.
Also along for the trip is Denham’s screenwriter, Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), a serious playwright who instantly falls for Ann.
You know what they find on Skull Island. A bunch of natives straight out of a Saturday-afternoon serial, dense jungle and creatures that were supposed to be wiped out by the last Ice Age. The natives offer Ann as a blond sacrifice to the giant ape Kong, but the heavy-breathing gorilla develops soft feelings for the lady.
“King Kong” is off-key from its opening. Jackson plays the early sequences for humor, but they’re not especially funny. It seems to take forever to get to the island, with a subplot about a first mate (Evan Parke) and cabin boy (Jamie Bell) padding things out.
There’s also a stoical captain (Thomas Kretschmann), a vain leading man (Kyle Chandler), and Denham’s long-suffering assistant (Colin Hanks). Jack Black sounds like great casting as the shifty, fast-talking Denham, but he rarely unleashes his own antic energy, and Naomi Watts fills her time with the requirements of a King Kong leading lady, which Fay Wray and Jessica Lange learned well: running, writhing, screaming.
The physical side of the production (which cost $200 million or so) is spectacular, a riot of teeming Manhattan streets and green jungle, much of it created by computer animation.
Kong himself is a digital beast, and a persuasive one. Andy Serkis, who “acted” the animated role of Gollum in “LOTR,” provides similar duty here, which might account for the fluidity of Kong’s facial expressions. It’s a believable creation.
The middle of the film is chock-full of nonstop action, including a brontosaurus stampede. One sequence of Kong protecting Ann from a hungry Tyrannosaurus posse is ingenious and clever – and it goes on so long it nearly makes you seasick. The battle with giant insects that immediately follows is definitive overkill.
Everything that was quick and implicit about the 103-minute original film is slow and obvious here, especially the love story between beauty and the beast. Even though “King Kong” has its share of brilliant filmmaking and tingly moments, the cumulative effect is more exhausting than enchanting.
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