King Kong

During the Great Depression, a shifty movie producer tells his cast and crew that he is making a moving picture on a ship heading to Singapore, but he really wants to find the mysterious Skull Island where they find King Kong and other really big beasts and bugs.

This movie is long and you feel it. Sometimes you get so lost in a movie that you cannot even tell that it is long. You can feel this movie being long. It feels like three movies in one, but I did find the entire movie enjoyable. There were some scenes that could have been cut out to make it shorter, but all of it was fun to watch so I don’t mind it all being in there. You just need to set yourself up for settling in and watching an epic, romantic adventure, then you’ll be fine.

There is a lot of back story and setup for all the main characters in the movie, and even some minor ones, while in New York City. I think it is important to keep all the back story in because it does play a part in the storyline later on. If you didn’t know certain things about Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), then things she says and does later on wouldn’t make much sense. There needs to be a build up of emotion between Watts and Adrian Brody’s writer character or else it makes no sense that he goes running through the island trying to save her from King Kong. It is a really long build-up before they ever get to the island or you get to see King Kong, but I think it all needed to be there.

Naomi Watts did a great job acting when she didn’t actually have that many lines. She spends a good deal of the movie interacting with Kong so she doesn’t need to talk a lot since he doesn’t know what she is saying. You always know what is going on and I never felt like she was acting against a green screen. The guy who played Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies played the stand-in for Kong during the filming of this movie. He also acted all of Kong’s facial expressions which were then turned into computer animation. He did an excellent job. You always know what Kong is thinking and he makes you very sad at the end, even though you know how it is going to end.

Adrian Brody did a good job as the writer who ends up falling in love with Watts’ character. You believe that he actually falls in love with her fairly quickly and they have good chemistry. He seems to have good chemistry with anyone though, since he had good chemistry kissing Halle Berry at the Oscars a few years back. Jack Black does an excellent job being the smarmy movie producer who is really out for himself, but he doesn’t play it over the top. He really makes you root and hate the character at the same time.

There are fifty million chase and fight scenes on the island between the film and boat crew, trying to find Ann Darrow after King Kong takes her, and the very large beasts on the island. There are also tons of chase and fight scenes between Kong and other large beasts on the island. Then there are the fight scenes between Kong and the film and boat crew. If the movie could have been trimmed anywhere, it could have been there. We really didn’t need that many chase and fight scenes, but they were all highly entertaining and fun to watch.

When they were done with the island, you felt like the movie could have ended, but I knew that we needed to see King Kong on the Empire State Building so that meant they were going back to New York City. That part of the movie isn’t as long as the island part, but it wasn’t super short either.

Even though the movie had all these great chase and fight scenes, my favorite ones were with Watts and Kong. They were the best and saddest scenes and that’s what I remember the most about the movie.

Rating: A-

Add a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.