A Monster of a Movie

Remake’s the king of all Kongs

CERT: PG-13 RUN TIME: 187mins

PLOT: A film crew travel to a mysterious island and return with a giant gorilla, which breaks free and wreaks havoc in New York.

Take a giant ape, a T-Rex, some oversized creepy crawlies, combine them with earth-shattering graphics and you’ve got an action blockbuster.

But add on an unusual but realistic beauty and the beast love story and you’ve got a film that’s scary, exciting and meaningful.

That’s what you get with Peter Jackson’s remake of the well known film but only if you can wait an hour before anything really happens.

The genius behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy goes much further than the two previous films did in making Kong almost human. The result is that it’s twice as long as the 1933 original, despite Jackson using the same narrative.

We follow Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) as she tries to pursue an acting career in 1930s New York with no luck. Suddenly she meets Carl Denham (Jack Black) a director with a secret agenda, who whisks her and an unsuspecting film crew to the mysterious Skull Island, where they’re confronted by primitive natives, dinosaurs and of course, Kong himself.

From here on entails a chain of non-stop action and a frenzy of computer generated nightmares, which bumped the film’s budget to a whopping £116 million.

Andy Serkis aka “Gollum” from Lord of the Rings has perfected Kong’s movements in a journey which took him from London zoo to Rwanda. There are a lot of funny moments where the giant ape’s distinctly human especially when he seems to laugh. The most endearing times are when Kong, after falling for Ann shows her tenderness and compassion.

Even as a computer-generated image his feelings seem more genuine than Adrien Brody’s as Jack Driscoll, who’s weak at playing the hero. More wooden than wood is Jack Black, who seems only able to pull off two different facial expressions-shocked and a bit more shocked.

When Kong arrives in New York he becomes part of Denham’s stage show but it’s not long before he rips through the theatre and into a dodgy setting of the city, some of which appears to have been painted on a back-drop.

He then proceeds to pick off every blonde woman till he finds Ann and carries her to the top of the Empire State building. Naomi Watts is utterly convincing as the apple of Kong’s eye, with an uncanny resemblance to real-life best mate, Nicole Kidman. And she’s just a good an actress, if not better. Her relationship with the beast is believable as she weeps uncontrollably realising Kong’s inevitable fate. This is where the real love story lies and not with Ann and Jack, the wimpy “hero”.

It comes to a point where you almost wish for a Hollywood style fairy tale ending, hoping Ann could kiss the monster and change him into a prince. But you know that’s not going to happen.

King Kong Reviews on the web:

Rotten Tomatoes

Times Online

Rolling Stone

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