Review

Review Date: 18-December-05
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

King Kong (2005)

It's easy to understand why Peter Jackson fell in love with "King Kong" as a barefoot lad in New Zealand, with its boy-magnet smorgasbord of uncharted islands and fabulous creatures and a touching, truthful warning about the failing of modern man. Yet I am deeply ambivalent about the remake-cum-homage that Jackson has unleashed this Christmas. For in being all things to his creative mind (first) and the appetites of viewers (second), the new "King Kong" doesn't add up to anything whole.

A surprising assessment, perhaps, for a movie that's three hours long, but most of "King Kong" is actually filler — though jaw-dropping, state-of-the-art filler, to be sure. It begins with an unsuccessful attempt to create three-dimensional characters out of a movie producer with big dreams but no money (Jack Black) and a vaudevillian entertainer succumbing to the Great Depression (Naomi Watts). These two set off to film a picture on the high seas in company with a shanghaied playwright (Adrien Brody) and the standard mess of crusty nautical types, including Andy Serkis as a stalwart mate (in addition to the template for Kong's movements) and Jamie Bell as a superfluous former stowaway who apparently represents all the dreamy-eyed, restless young lads in human history.

After an hour the motley crew finds itself on Skull Island (cue ominous music), which is littered with the bones of monsters and humans alike. And here begins one of the most astonishing and wearying displays of special effects you will ever see. For the next hour or more Jackson goes ape, piling one "get a load of this!" scene on top of another and extending each beyond the point where you assume he can reasonably go. You thought King Kong was the star of this extravaganza? Think again. The creepy natives, ravenous dinosaurs, 100-pound bugs, and helicopter-sized bats threaten to steal the show, and while you have to admire Jackson's enthusiasm (and the skill of Weta Workshop which he helped establish), you are likely to wish he'd toned it down.

Why? Because there's a heart of gold to this story whose simplicity deserves more respect. The moral about the levels of mankind and their relationship to beauty could be told to full effect in half an hour, even with the spectacle of Kong. And indeed the behemoth whose name is on the marquee is a marvelous character, wholly believable in every instance of wrath and silence. Watts can't muster more than one openmouthed expression to convey both terror and empathy, but the digitized gorilla speaks volumes about his basic need for security and affection (in the expression of which he unknowingly declares himself superior to the reserve of the playwright and ambition of the producer). The final scene atop the Empire State Building, the filmmakers' coup-de-grace, is sincerely afflicting even after all that came before. But what will viewers take with them? With the big-budget bravado that he has all but cornered (at least at this level of competence), Jackson may have drowned out the now almost revolutionary idea that love and compassion are instinctual to mankind.

Copyright © 2005 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.