2005 / 187 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed Ben Heckendorn

The 2005 remake of “King Kong” is a really good hour and a half long ape-meets-girl movie. Unfortunately since it’s 3 hours long the other 90 minutes is a very mundane (and in my opinion boring) wanna-be “Jurassic Park” flick. Giant CGI creature movies have become so commonplace it’s hard to find them special anymore. “Jurassic Park”, while not that great, was at least original in its day. But that was a zillion “attack of the rendered creature” movies ago. Simply put, there are only so many ways you can run away from a dinosaur.

Luckily the good parts of “King Kong” are indeed quite good. I didn’t mind the slow beginning of the film, the “Depression Montage” in the opening set up the time period quite well. Then Jack Black (playing a film director who seems to be a hybrid of Orson Welles and Ed Wood) having to basically “escape” New York before his latest film project can be shut down is interesting. But then it takes nearly an hour (I’m guessing) for them to even reach S! K! U! L! L! island (why I typed it like that will make sense once you’ve seen the film). Which is OK I guess, but reeks of padding. James Cameron can have a boat sail around for an hour with nothing happening and make it interesting. Here that’s not the case, because the film isn’t about the boat.

Reaching Skull Island and the subsequent scenes make up the bulk of the movie (I’m sure of this as the last segment in New York couldn’t have been much longer than 30 minutes) Of course the natives capture the girl and offer her to Kong, and the ship’s crew then sets out to rescue her. This is where the film really drags. The obligatory scenes with Kong and Naomi Watts “bonding” are really good, but then it always cuts away to “Jack Black’s Bumbling Dinosaur Island Adventures” It’s quite monotonous, an unrelenting barrage of “monster attacks”, the worst of which being a totally unbelievable Brontosaurus stampede through a canyon. Unbelievable because you’ve got 10 or so giant dinosaurs stomping down a canyon that can’t be but 30 feet wide, with all the crew members running below them as well, plus some Raptors thrown in (why not?), then at the end of the chase all the big dinosaurs crash and pile up like cars in a highway wreck and yet most of the crew survives. A really ridiculous bit is when the screenwriter character (Adrien Brody) leaps up and kicks a Raptor in the head as he’s running. Scenes like this do nothing for the film but make it longer.

I will give this movie points for one thing though – during this chase (or maybe it was the chase afterwards, or the chase after that, I don’t know) someone does plug several Raptors with their Tommy gun. FINALLY somebody shoots a dinosaur! Regardless of any refreshing dino-blasting these scenes go on forever. We cut back to Naomi Watts and Kong every so often and they’ve got lots of good stuff (like the sunset scene where she falls asleep in his hand) but then it’s back to the “Jungle Adventures” and yet more monsters, close calls and “saved at the last minute by other crew members” resolutions to impossible odds. It’s almost like Peter Jackson said to his art department “Draw every killer jungle creature you can think of and we’ll put them ALL in this movie!”

Finally Adrien Brody saves Naomi Watts, and of course Kong chases them back to shore. Here the movie becomes good again, with Kong’s sad capture, his pain and the human’s treatment of him. The movie continues to be good as we return to New York to show off Kong as “the 8th wonder of the world”, even if we all know how it ends. One of the scenes in particular is really touching as Kong, having recaptured the now-willing Naomi Watts, goes through Central Park with her and slides around on a frozen lake. Kong is having fun and loving life, after spending so much of his time fighting for survival. THIS is the story we need to see, not endless dinosaur attacks on nameless crew members.

Probably the reason the ending scenes are so good is because they’re very similar to the end scenes of “The Iron Giant”, a far superior (and shorter) film that’s obscure enough that not many people will notice. Granted there’s only so many ways a film like this can end, but regardless it all seems fairly predictable. But in a good way.

“King Kong” is worth seeing for the story of “an ape and his girl” but to me it dragged in a lot of places. Ironically this film was originally going to be shorter, but the studio (or Jackson, or somebody) wanted “an epic” so they increased the special FX budget in post production to allow about 30-40 more minutes of movie to be completed and added. That’s too bad because I think it was at least 40 minutes too long, and I bet most audiences (not critics) will feel the same way. “Lord of the Rings” didn’t seem long at 3 hours because for each movie they had WAY more story than they could possibly fit in 3 hours, so the story they did fit in moved quickly and efficiently. Here it’s the opposite, a 90 minute story stretched to 3 hours. It shows.

POSTSCRIPT:

It seems every movie these days has to have a twist, and I don’t see why “King Kong” had to be different. Yes, I am suggesting it – why can’t Kong win? He’s set up to be a sympathetic character so it’s sad when he dies, but it would have been even cooler to see him kick some ass. Why couldn’t he escape New York and run up to Canada, or the bayou, or Mexico? Really nobody could even stop Kong until he climbed up the Empire State Building (no spoiler there) and made himself a target.

We’ve already seen Kong die twice, once in 1933 and then again (cheesily) in 1976. How awesome would it be, instead of wasting all that time with the dinosaurs in this film, to instead make the second half about Kong escaping attack across America with Naomi Watts in tow? Then they could finally make it to the safety of some dense forest, or South American jungle. Free again, and King again. The final scene, they arrive, Naomi Watts looks up at Kong, music swells, cut to CLOSE UP of Kong, he looks at her, then CUT TO WIDE, music stops - and KONG does his triumphant yell, beats his chest, CUT TO BLACK, TITLE: “KING KONG” (and a final music beat).

THAT’S the kind of ending that gets applause and cheers.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2005 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Ben's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.