Watching a film like King Kong months after its release is perhaps a far more honest way to view (and review) the flim. Far away from the hype and hoopla, the advertising blitz and fast food tie-ins, the geeking fanboys and fawning critics, the movie is at last given a chance to speak for itself. Sadly, it turns out it doesn't have all that much to say. Or, rather, it talks endlessly but manages to articulate very little.
The most glaring fault in a film as large as Kong winds up being its size. Not in terms of staging or special effects - two areas in which it truly soars - but rather in the sheer length of the thing. At three hours plus, there's simply no way a good deal of it couldn't be cut; easily an hour could have been trimmed without damaging (and possibly strengthening) the overall story of the film. As it is, though, two rather good and well-crafted bookends - the film's beginning and ending in 1930s era New York City - are overwhelmed and weighed down by a bloated middle act set on Skull Island which winds up being, for all intents and purposes, an hour long fight and/or chase scene. At first it's exhilirating, but it eventually grows tedious - and then continues on for another half an hour. Cut that, I'd say, and you would have a rather decent film on your hands.
It's near the height of the Great Depression in New York and aspiring actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) is down on her luck. Struggling to make ends meet, she is willing to do just about anything by the time her path crosses that of filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black). Denham is an arrogant and energetic man looking for a "size four" female to fill the role recently departed by a Hollywood starlet in his feature-length (and overbudget) adventure film project. Darrow fits the bill. He neglects to tell her that primary filming for the picture will take place as at a mysterious (and officially "undiscovered") piece of land in the middle of a vast ocean, known only as Skull Island.
This part of the film works, which surprised me a bit. Jackson artfully captures a New York City of the past, right down to the finest details, and quickly engages you in this world. In fact, right up to the point where Carl tricks a famous writer (Adrien Brody) into making the voyage to Skull Island with them, I thought this was going to be one of the better "blockbusters" I'd ever seen. Sadly, once the ship sets sail, the movie starts to lose steam. The voyage itself has its interesting moments, with its forboding and ominious atmosphere, but that too soon starts to drag on and you can't help but start to wonder when Kong is finally going to show up in the movie.
Unfortunately, once he does, things don't get much better. While Kong himself is undoubtedly an awe-inspiring CGI masterwork, this can only hold your attention for so long and the film gets bogged down in the aforementioned extended middle section on Skull Island, one long chase or battle scene after another in which the film crew fights Kong or Kong fights random dinosaurs. Who knows, maybe this is your thing - but it sure wasn't mine.
The film wraps up back in New York City, in a way that will hardly come as a surprise to anybody familiar with the Kong story and mythology. The movie definitely improves once it gets back to the city, but by the time it finally does, it's lost so much of its luster or relevance that it's hard to get excited about it all over again. For their part, Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody turn in solid performances (despite having little to actually do), as does Jack Black, who was oddly maligned in some early reviews of the film. Jackson's direction is top-notch as well, though he definitely fell a bit too much in love with the picture (or with long running times in general, after the success of the LOTR films), and this seems to have clouded his judgement in the editing room. So much of this thing could have been pared down and made into a decent, even good movie. What winds up on the screen, unforunately, isn't that movie.
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