★★★★
King Kong inspires the kind of joy felt when watching a film that takes advantage of existing in the medium it does. It manages to highlight the value of stop motion animation while seamlessly blending it with live action during fast paced and exciting set pieces. Despite this, the film’s opening is rather dull with the characters being pretty boilerplate, the only mildly interesting character being Carl Denham, the crazed fearless director who initiates the adventure. However the set up and following voyage to Skull Island is thankfully brisk.
Just less than halfway through the film we meet King Kong, and from this point on the film’s greatness really starts to shine. While the overall animation is choppy compared to what would be expected of a stop motion studio production today, it is by no means amateurish and has tons of charm given the time consuming and difficult nature of stop motion. Having said that, there are moments where the animation is incredibly fluid and detailed, like when character Jack Driscoll is animated climbing up a cliff side towards Kong’s cave, he slips, looks down and corrects his grip, showing this. Arguably the best aspect of the film is the amount of character given to Kong through his animation and interaction with his environments. We see Kong sucking his finger after getting stabbed, playing with the T-Rex and Elasmosaurus after killing them and examining and sniffing clothing. These subtle endearing moments of curiosity are plentiful, making Kong more likeable than any of the human characters and makes us much more sympathetic towards him. The only thing that makes Kong’s artificiality stand out is the model made of his upper body for close-up shots where he has a wide smile which comes across as goofy. However, the tone of the film is light enough that it somewhat fits in to the swashbuckling vibe. The times where the film’s tone isn’t as adventurous is when it’s really successfully creating horrifying spectacles with its set pieces.
What makes these set pieces special are the isolated moments of terror and emotion sprinkled throughout the scenes, affirming the danger of the monsters. Rather than waves of men being wiped out by these huge monsters, there are numerous times where for a moment you follow an isolated member before they die. This does an incredible job of heightening the panic and threat by seeing a person struggling and screaming before they die. It also helps that we see the actors genuinely clinging to the environment while what they are hanging onto is being tossed around, effectively giving the impression of the danger that the characters are in. Another thing the film gets right is how authentic the interactions between monsters and people feel. The perspective of the shots always feel consistent. Through predominantly using rear projection for the animation, we stay in the foreground with the actors so we get a sense of the scope of the monsters. A scene I was really impressed by is when a group of Denham’s crew are hanging on to a large log fallen across a gorge. On one side we see Kong lift up the log and start to shake the men off, the coordination between the animated Kong and the live action log is spot on, whichever way he thrusts, the log follows perfectly in sync.
The reason that I feel the film flies by is due to the fact that from Kong’s introduction there’s near enough non-stop action for the remaining hour. What keeps it from feeling stale is how much the action varies in location and the destruction. In the last scene alone we see Kong breaking out of a theatre, cars crashing with passengers flying out, Kong biting and flinging pedestrians, ripping off the canopy of a building, tearing down a train bridge causing a train to crash where he proceeds to pull it off its tracks, crushing it, then finally climbing up the empire state building as planes attempt to take him down. Every moment there’s new victims, new environments and new objects being destroyed so as a viewer it keeps you continuously engaged. It’s astounding that a film from 1933 that relies so heavily on its special effects is this detailed and holds up this well, managing to generate as much fun as it does. I feel it could easily go up against contemporary blockbusters and come out on top. It’s a classic for a reason, essential viewing, I give it 4 stars out of 5.
