WaPo reviews King Kong. "A Beauty of a Beast." Gonna see it?

'King Kong': A Beauty of a Beast

By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; C01

The new "King Kong" answers many important questions:

Can a girl outrun a dinosaur? (Yes.)

Can a tommy gun kill a prehistoric spider? (Yes.)

Can a blonde and a monkey find true, if chaste, love at the top of the Empire State Building? (Yes.)

Can three hours feel like 90 minutes? (Yes.)

Can Jack Black act? (No.)

One hundred eighty-seven minutes of mesmerization, astonishment, thrills, chills, spills, kills and ills, Peter Jackson's big monkey picture show is certainly the best popular entertainment of the year. The film is a wondrous blend of then and now: It honors its mythic predecessor of 1933 while using sophisticated movie technology to seamlessly manipulate the fantastic. It's more fun than a barrel of dinosaurs, and in fact it takes us into the center of a barrel of dinosaurs, or at least a dinosaur stampede in which our heroes and 10 or so panicked brontosaurs try to merge lanes without any traffic cones to govern the flow, and the effect is that of being stuck in a keg of thunder lizards bouncing downhill.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121302031_pf.html

I know the reviews are rapturous, but I just feel too much deja vu after the original and the '76 remake (which I liked, despite negative reviews). 3-plus hours? Plus face-eating slugs and giant spiders (again)? I've got "The Family Stone" "Brokeback Mountain" "Memoirs of a Geisha" "The Producers" "Transamerica" and others way ahead of it on the list.

I'm sure other people will be happy to take my place.

I would guess, given the interminable worship of Frodo at the end of Return of the King, that Peter Jackson overdoes it again. Don't need to sit through another Titanic.

ever since we subscribed to Netflix, we haven't gone to any movies.

I went and saw King Kong last night. It was an entertaining film, worth the price of admission on the big screen.

The critics are falling all over themselves to heap praise on this film. While it IS a good movie, it has some serious pacing problems. This film didn't have to be three hours, and essentially there is an awful lot of filler that gives the director an opportunity to show off technically without offering any particular advancement in the plot. Had Jackson not had such great success with Lord of the Rings, a smart producer would have taken him by the hand and said, "enough already." Some of this was just wayyyyy over-indulgent.



There has been much praise heaped on the special effects, dinosaurs, etc. Many of these shots are breathtaking, but these are not as convincing as many would have you believe, especially when the live actors were running in and among the legs of stampeding monsters.

There were also some really strange and annoying camera gimmicks that Jackson did which really served no purpose... this strange slow down and blur effect thing he did in a couple of places had me scratching my head as to exactly what the hell he was trying to say.

There is a scene with some ice in Central Park that will make you cringe in just how terribly cloying and sappy it is. It was completely redundant and unnecessary.

There is also some wierdness that is never adequately explained with a car chase with Driscoll just happening to lead Kong to where Ann is walking.

The Good Stuff:
Despite the before-mentioned flaws, the film is entertaining. Kong is a joy to behold, and the New York depression-era footage, while obviously computer generated is still fun to view. Naomi Watts is great as Ann Darrow, and she juggles, too. It was also nice to see the guy who played Billy Elliot all grown up. Colin Hanks was also in this as Denham's assistant.

Great to get this review. You ought to post this separately yourself on DU Lounge. Totally gratuitous holiday photo follows as my way of saying thanks.

...or is anyone else ticked off when gorillas are referred to as monkeys? It's like labeling a wolf as a poodle.

Maybe I'm just an anal retentive nerd.

Or whenever thwy made the original.

This remake, like most remakes, seems utterly pointless. Hey...take the same plot, the same characters and spend $200 million to make another one. Only do this in color and different actors. Yeah, THAT's a big reason to do it.

Naturally, it will probably win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.