Movie Review: King Kong (2005)
Peter Jackson followed up his absurdly successful and groundbreaking Lord of the Rings trilogy with another absurdly long visual spectacle: 2005’s King Kong.
This is an okay movie, but definitely a disappointment given Peter Jackson’s previous track record of adapting beloved properties. The movie is way too long, and way too self important. It stays pretty true to the original 1933 film, but just takes forever to tell the same exact story. It does keep its 1933 setting, though, which is kind of fun.
The movie has some bizarre casting choices (i.e. Jack Black as Carl Denham, the film director), but absolutely triumphs in the casting of Naomi Watts (Mulholland Dr.) as Ann Darrow, the Fay Wray role.
There’s a lot of stuff in this movie that I’m tempted to skip whenever I rewatch it. Nobody sets foot on Skull Island until almost an hour into the movie and before that, we have to sit by and watch a hackneyed love plot between Ann and Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody, The Pianist). Brody’s performance is pretty lacking in my opinion.
There’s some good stuff on Skull Island, of course. The creatures mostly look great, though there are a few bad shots. There’s an elongated scene in which many of the characters are at the bottom of a bit and get attacked by giant, disgusting bugs.
It’s absolutely disgusting and it seems like a throwback to when Peter Jackson was making schlocky horror movies.
There’s some great stuff with Kong, too. It’s the same stuff we’ve seen before. Kong is infatuated with Ann, but Ann maintains some kind of power over him.
When Kong ends up back in New York, it’s the same kind of stuff you’d expect to see, but it’s mostly pretty good.
The biggest problem with this movie is certainly the length. If you could remove a lot of the fat from this movie, you’d have an excellen 2 hour and 15 minute long movie. Instead, though, you have a movie that’s over 3 hours.
Rating: 6/10
