King Kong (2005)
I was on pins and needles waiting for this movie. The preview made me misty and wriggly with anticipation all at once. Knowing director Peter Jackson’s intense adoration of this film, and having witnessed many examples of his dedication to art on film, I had supreme confidence that this King Kong was going to be the granddaddy of them all. However, sometimes a labor of love is so personal that you lose touch with the flow, and just linger lovingly over every tiny detail. King Kong suffers from that a bit, and occasionally does feel as long as it is (he makes no assumptions that anyone knows the story), but you still need to see it on the big screen.
Sweeping panoramic shots where the action is taking place in a very small percentage of the screen lend scope that the previous incarnations of this tale simply did not have the resources to do. Grand-scale reproductions of 1933 New York City and the most incredible, minute detail (and not digital) give the film a rich, delicious texture. It is a feast for the eyes, and a good part of it is indeed a feast for the soul. The shots around the Empire State Building are amazing on many many levels. Andy Serkis, acting as Kong in the same motion-capture way that he did as Gollum, brings a realism to the great ape that could never be there before. He is able to act with Naomi Watts, rather than the two of them imagining the other’s eyes, and that connection definitely translates on screen. At the inevitable but protracted end, I cried genuine tears.
The bumps are the occasional fan boy diversions into random side characters (Jamie Bell) whose stories digress rather than divert, and the repeating shots of Kong doing his thing when we have already established him so effectively doing his thing for several minutes. It’s just little hiccups, but it did affect the flow of the movie enough that it got tiring. Jackson put back a giant insect pit segment which was cut from his childhood favorite original, and it’s genuinely horrifying, but feels like it was added just to add it.
He keeps the 1930’s flavor of the movie, the 1933 movie, by having the peril be almost comically sidestepped by the actors. It’s like he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to remake a 1930’s movie with modern or with period sensibilities with regards to the acting and action. He settles somewhere in the middle, so while our heroes are having a Flash Gordon moment in the valley of the Sauropods, they are having a deeper, more sophisticated moment elsewhere. Then with no regard to our modern awareness of the difficulties of transporting a gassed 800 pound gorilla to a major city with warrants out for everyone’s arrest and no crew, we’re ready for the big show! It’s a funny hybrid between the genres of modern film and period film. What I think was lost in this remake was the Depression-Era anger about exploitation and class divides that separated Americans from their hopes so brutally in that era. Now it’s just beauty will lead you astray.
It is lovely to see Jack Black be used as more than just a parodic man-child, I hope he does more of it. I love that man-child, but I do hope he can continue to stretch himself in this way. It was a little hard to recast him as the serious guy while recasting Adrian Brody as the adventurer-type guy, but fortunately we have lots of shots of Naomi Watt’s perfect face and moist, emotive eyes to distract us from the disconnect. I think I would have liked Colin Hanks and Adrian Brody to have switched roles. Go see it on the big screen, but give the Full Price dollars to the Humane Society.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 12/14/05
Time in minutes 187
Director Peter Jackson
Studio Universal
