How do you follow up one of film history’s biggest triumphs when you’re done? Why you do another special effects crapstraveganza of course. Were you expecting Peter Jackson to do an indie film about gay cowboys? That only happens when you LOSE the studio a few hundred million dollars (are you listening Ang?).
Peter Jackson may well be directing slow dancing steel workers in the near future if he doesn’t get off the special effects trip and start concentrating on the freaking story.
King Kong was (and is) nothing but a special effects movie.
In 1933 some guy figured out that by using scale models he could make a giant ape climb the Empire State Building and people went bananas (sorry about the pun).
Today?
Ehhhh….
Not so much.
In the last 70 years or so we’ve become a wee more sophisticated Pete. It’s hard to wow us with an animated monkey climbing up a building. You need a great story, and to me that’s always been the Achilles heel of King Kong.
Mr. Jackson is suffering from a bad case of what I like to call “Lucas-itis”. Who needs a story when I can amaze the audience with yet another battle scene?
Am I the only person out there who was yawning like hell in the 3rd Lord of The Rings movie when there was yet another battle scene?
Memo to Hollywood. Special effects just ain’t that special anymore. We all know it’s some nerd typing code into a computer so no one is impressed. If I see a living stunt man fall off a building, there’s an element of risk, however when I see Naomi Watts hanging onto a cliff above an OBVIOUS blue screen I think of James T. Kirk getting smacked in the melon with Styrofoam boulders.
What makes you think I want to see THREE hours of this shit?
In the first hour of the movie we meet Naomi Watts. She’s an attractive out of work juggler (again, obviously computer animated) who refuses to strip at a burlesque theatre.
What’s a girl to do?
She climbs on board a seedy tramp steamer filled with sweaty one eyed sailors and Germans after they buy her dinner in a café.
Yeah Naomi. THAT sounds like a good idea. I’ll bet that the stripping thing will sound like pretty damn good after the 18th anal pounding by a deck hand named “Klaus”.
You want to see a giant monkey? Come into my cabin “fraulein”.
Jack Black plays Carl Denham, a sleazy movie producer and I think that this is a horrible casting choice. He’s great playing an annoying guy in a record shop, or an annoying guy on a college road trip, or an annoying guy dating a fat chick, or an annoying guy pretending to be a teacher, but you just can’t take him seriously as an evil backstabbing movie producer. It’s like hiring George Carlin to play Darth Vader. Whenever he does something sleazy it’s with a twinkle in his eye.
In an equally bizarre bit o’ casting they decide to make Adrien Brody the love interest.
I’m sorry, but Adrian Brody?!! He’s only slightly less ugly than Emo Phillips. Even when he takes of his shirt and shows that he spent 6 months at the gym I still can’t see anything but a slightly buff Gilligan.
Was this film casted at a keg party? I’m surprised that Naomi wasn’t replaced with Paris Hilton.
Anyway, after an hour of slowly getting us to relate to the characters the ship arrives at the fog enshrouded “skull island” and if you listen closely you can hear the orgasmic squeals of unemployed New Zealander special effects artists.
Bring on the endless battles Mr. Jackson!
Nasty little New Zelandeezers. Always take up my precious time with boring battleezes.
My precious!!
First we have to sit through the fight with the local cannibals.
It’s funny, but the children seem to bear a striking resemblance to a water logged little witch from “The Ring” (all that was missing was the broken television set) and their village looked suspiciously like Helm’s Deep from that previous movie of Mr. Jackson’s.
Blah blah blah… The cannibals sneak back on board the ship in the middle of the night and kidnap Naomi whom they plan to offer up to King Kong as a sacrifice.
Kong snatches Naomi and dashes off into the jungle (stop me if I’m spoiling the story for you).
I want to try a little experiment if you will indulge me. Go into your daughter or son’s room and put their pet gerbil in your hand. Now flail it around like your armpits are on fire. Run up and down the stairs using all four appendages like a monkey and make sure that you slam that rodent clutching fist into the ground repeatedly.
How’s Mr. Nibble’s doing?
Amazingly though, after King Kong runs through the dense underbrush Naomi seems to be ok. She doesn’t have whiplash, a dislocated shoulder and she hasn’t vomited on her dress. I think I saw a twig in her hair briefly.
Yeah, yeah. It’s a movie. I know.
Adrian convinces the crew of the tramp steamer that Naomi needs to be rescued and explains at the very least that her clingy dress was probably pulled off in the struggle. Naturally all of them horny sailors quickly volunteer to be killed off in increasingly gruesome ways.
Mr. Jackson? Can I get some gratitous special effects scenes now? I was just sitting here thinking that my ass wasn’t nearly as numb as it was in your last 3 films. Please, PLEASE can you waste an hour and a half of film with some more boring battles?
Your wish is my command sir!!
The next 90 minutes or so is a montage of people being stepped on by dinosaurs, fallen on by dinosaurs, eaten by dinosaurs and just about any other untimely death that can happen to you when in the company of dinosaurs. Afterwards you can deal with the man eating slugs, man eating bats, man eating crickets and anything else that would eat a man if you made it the size of a large dog.
Poor Naomi. Everything that isn’t killing off her search party is trying to eat her. There’s a hil-arious bit in the film where she realizes that there’s something huge and scary standing behind her and so she sloooowly turns around to see what it is, and then freaks out and runs in the direction of something else that’s equally big and scary.
It’s so funny that she repeats this pivot/scream/run bit at least 4 times.
Imagine watching Jaws except that instead of building tension with one or two deaths over the entire film, you watched guys in wetsuits getting chomped on by moray eels, and octopuses and giant starfish every 5 minutes or so.
Welcome to the non stop feeding frenzy that is Kong.
A dinosaur will be eating another dinosaur. The hind quarters will be hanging out of it’s mouth and it will STILL run after Naomi.
I could go into great detail describing what eats who but let’s just say that other than the 3 principal stars in the movie you shouldn’t get too attached to anyone.
Jumping ahead to New York. No big surprises here. Kong is still chained to a stage, teased and generally pissed off until he breaks free and runs around the city smashing things and we all know how it ends.
This movie is another Peter Jackson ass buster. You could hear knees and backs cracking like gunshots as people struggled to get up out of their seats. If he had just cut out an hour of the jungle massacre it might not be too bad but at over 3 hours in length I just can’t recommend it.
The really scary thing is that you just KNOW that freak boy has a 4 hour director’s cut being transferred onto DVD as we speak.
What’s it going to say? “Now with 30% more man eating slugs!!”
