Monday, June 28, 2010
King Kong
Review by Sombrero Grande
In anticipation of the opening of Universal Studios Hollywood's King Kong 360 3-D attraction, I'm re-posting my mini-review of Peter Jackson's King Kong, originally published here on Sombrero Grande's Movie Mesa as part of a 2005-in-review article.
I keep wondering if all the other critics saw the same movie I did. Much of Peter Jackson's King Kong (or "King Long" as I just made a Freudian slip in my typing) reminded me of the scene in Jackson's The Return of the King where Frodo just takes forever to get on that damn boat at the end.
I think Jackson could have ended the movie immediately after the scene where Kong's face is repeatedly bashed with ether bottles as Ann Darrow screams from the rowboat. That really summed up all that needed to be said, but instead, Jackson strings the audience along for the whole fiasco back in New York just to get to the famous Empire State Building scene. After what seemed like the tenth time Ann and Kong just stared at each other for what seems like a solid ten minutes, I felt like screaming, "just fall off the damn building already! I GET it!"
The film's marathon running time could be forgiven if so much hadn't been left out. King Kong runs over three hours in length (while, as a friend humorously pointed out, The Simpsons were able to tell Kong's whole story in about 7 minutes) yet we never find out how they managed to get Kong back to New York and the film never followed up with Jimmy after taking a large chunk of the movie to set up his go-nowhere story. Instead we merely get Jack Black painfully delivering the film's awkward last line moments after Kong impacts.
Yes, the movie looks nice and is meant to merely be a fun adventure story, but after the second time some forgotten crew member arrived at just the right time to save the headline cast members--swinging in on a vine with gun blazing and picking off squirming bugs while never once even nicking Jack Black or Adrien Brody--I realized I wasn't having fun anymore.
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