Review of King Kong (2005) by Brendand. — 19 Apr 2007

The "King Kong" with Faye Wray was a horrible, schlocky story that, quite frankly, demeaned everyone who worked on it, Wray included. The "King Kong" with Jeff Daniels suffered from its own epic delusions, finally crumbling under the weight of a horrible direction.

But Peter Jackson's take on "King Kong" is the worst version of the most overrated story of all time. First of all, Jackson tries to approach this version with the same eye that Steven Spielberg used in the first hour or so of "Jurassic Park.

" At this point, however, you can't do that, because "Jurassic Park" did that awe-inspiring animated-animals moment better than any movie before or since -- it still sends a shiver up my spine when I watch the brontosaur jump up to grab the top leaves on the trees.

There is no "wow" moment in Jackson's "King Kong" because Jackson tries to cram "wow" moments in every five or six minutes, completely obliterating their impact. Now, I've heard from both critics and members of my own family that the ape was beautifully animated.

I say now what I said to them: WHAT?!? Through the entire damned movie, all I could think was, "Wow, that ape doesn't look real at all; it looks like a character from an XBOX-360 game." The world in which Kong lives is likewise hokey, looking like nothing but lame backdrops excised from "Return of the King" (easily the worst and most pretentious of the "Lord of the Rings" movies).

Then there's the writing. The story of "Kong" is bad enough, but humanizing the animal only makes it worse. Let's make one thing clear: Kong is a giant ape who appears to have marked intelligence and emotion.

But he is still an ape! A friend once told me that this is a stupid reason to dislike the film, but frankly, I don't know how anyone could put the obvious bestial implications out of his or her mind.

To be fair, the movie never even comes close to touching the bestiality subject; but the fact that there's even a hint that Naomi Watts's character might be feeling something for the ape is a little bit nausea-inducing.

If there bond between Watts and the ape had been more a mother-son kind of relationship, the film might've worked better; but as it stands, it straddles the love relationship without fully dedicating itself one way or the other whilst hinting at the obviously disturbing prospect of an affair between the two.

Meanwhile, the script itself is horrendous. There is not one good piece of dialogue throughout the entire film. I'm not sure if Jackson allowed a herd of rabid, mentally-challenged Venusian cows to write it, or if he got so wrapped up in chase scenes and third-rate "Jurassic Park" tyrannosaur knock-offs that he forgot that what's being said is important, but either way, not even Jack Black can save some of the dumbest lines ever uttered in cinematic history.

...Which brings me to my next point: The acting was atrocious. I have to disagree with those who have been pseudo-apologists for Jack Black, Naomi Watts, and Andy Serkis. Each of the three has done brilliant work in the past, but "Kong" is not something they should put on their resumes.

Black spends the entire movie looking lost, and Serkis, who deserved a million awards for the Gollum-schizophrenia scene in "The Two Towers," does not make the big ape any more realistic. Even Watts, who at least attempts to bring something to the table, ends up crumbling under the weight of an overwrought, underdeveloped, underwritten script, and her performance suffers precisely because of it.

Then there's Peter Jackson. After "The Two Towers," which I still believe was his crowning achievement as a director, I was willing to forgive the tedious final hour of "Return of the King," especially because the final two scenes were so emotionally powerful.

"King Kong," however, is a directorial mess. He switches camera angles at all the wrong times, and he doesn't focus on what he should when he should. For example, the penultimate scene, the famous one in which Kong is assaulted by mighty fighter jets, gets lost in its own action; rather than using the beautiful backdrop of New York City as its focal point, it uses Kong, and Watts gets lost.

This is no good, especially when the skyline of New York is dolled up to look like something out of "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow." And here's another problem: the scale of everything changes when Kong gets to New York City.

Kong was easily the largest thing on Skull Island; yet he is all-of-a-sudden minuscule when he climbs up the Empire State Building. This scene actually worked in previous incarnations of "Kong" because the ape wasn't meant to look too real, giving the (admittedly dumb) story a kind of fairy-tale feel to it.

Here, however, Jackson has made a lot of attempts to show Kong's fur waving in the wind, his eyes twitching and blinking like a human's, his mouth occasionally twisting up into a man-like smile.

You can't have it both ways! The ape has more distinct mannerisms than any Kong before it, and yet the Empire State Building looks like it could reach the Cloud City from "The Empire Strikes Back.

" Finally, as many have pointed out, there's the running time. Yes, about a good hour could've been trimmed off the movie and still gotten Jackson's point across, potentially better.

But the first forty-five minutes are a snore, too, even though there's lots of plot happening; likewise, the return to New York City, before Kong shows up, is a snoozer, although it contains the entire setup for the Grand Finale.

And that's not even counting the hour and a half (or so) Jackson spends on all the different weirdo Skull Island creatures. The point is, the movie plods along rather than meanders; and the action sequences, far from advancing the plot, make the story come to an absolute stand-still in favor of bang-bang-bang action.

Honestly, I cannot fathom what possessed critics (or anyone else) to recommend this film. It is one of the most pretentious, boring, stupid movies ever made, and Jackson ought to issue a bigger apology for this than George Lucas needs to for "The Phantom Menace.

" We live in a digital age, which could've given Jackson the chance to bring something new to the Kong mythos. Instead, he simply rehashes what's already done (and actually kind of dumbs it down), crafting a movie that might've looked good in 1933, but that now just makes me want to throw popcorn at the screen and sit there for another three hours demanding that Jackson compensate me for the time spent watching this awful mess.