Thursday, December 15, 2005

Movie review – “King Kong” (2005) ***1/2

Everyone loves Naomi Watts in the new King Kong - the monster of course, who not only beats up dinosaurs for her on Skull Island but then basically dies for her in New York, plus the crew of the boat that goes to Skull Island and mostly gets wiped out looking for her (at what point do they go "hang on, she's not worth 15 of us" - its ok for Aiden Brophy because he's going to get to have sex with her but what about the rest); there's also Peter Jackson who gives Watts lots and lots of close ups.

I really enjoyed the film: tremendous special effects, good performances, a great gorilla, plenty of roller coaster action, moving finale, better developed love story between monster and girl (he likes her partly because of her acting skills, which is a nice touch), the humans on Skull Island are truly terrifying, all of Skull Island is terrifying, they improve on the original by making sure that Watts is no part of Kong's humiliation in New York.

Some debits: a bit overlong (did we need all the Watts backstory?), why all the emphasis on that young kid (Jamie Bell) and the Heart of Darkness?, the captain comes to the rescue twice when once was enough (and what happends to his character?), the scenes with tommy guns smacks a bit too much of thinking-about-the-video-game spin off. But a worthy remake of the original.

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