Re: (TV) Totally OT: King Kong review for Jay

["Ty Burr" <tyburr@mindspring.com>]

This is running in tmw's Globe; you asked for it, man.

King Kong

Directed by: Peter Jackson

Written by: Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens, based on a story
by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace

Starring: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, and ... Kong

At: Boston Common, Fenway, suburbs

Running time: 187 minutes

Rated: PG-13 (frightening adventure violence, disturbing images)

Three stars

***

By Ty Burr

Globe Staff

Peter Jackson's "King Kong" delivers all you could possibly want from a
modern popcorn behemoth: state-of-the-art special effects, epic scope and
running time, rampaging dinosaurs, things majestically going ka-boom. It's
not so much a remake as it is a loving re-creation of the 1933 original on
extra-strength steroids, with a side order of Botox. You've seen it all
before but most assuredly never like this.

So why did I come away feeling something was missing?

"Kong" re-establishes Jackson as the king of Hollywood gigantism, and plenty
of moviegoers will feel like they're getting their money's worth. After an
overly drawn-out first hour, the film turns into an E-ticket ride of the
first order, with scene after eye-popping scene in which the 24-foot ape
takes on T. Rexes, elevated trains, biplanes, and Naomi Watts. There's a
brontosaurus stampede almost as terrifying as rush hour on the Southeast
Expressway, and a Times Square donnybrook that's a landmark in screen
mayhem.

Andy Serkis -- the body under Gollum's digital skin in "The Lord of the
Rings" -- gives Kong enough personality, enough soul, to make you believe
he'd tumble for Watts's Ann Darrow, and the director works overtime to
create a love story between the two that's substantially deeper than
anything offered by the original or the misbegotten 1976 remake.

It's the movie itself that's curiously lacking in soul. Jackson is so
devoted to piling modern CGI wonders on the bones of the 1933 classic that
he forgets to have much fun. Whether by conscious choice or through the
limitations of digital technology, the color scheme in "Kong" is one of
dark, leaden grays. The film is an astonishing machine.

It's also quite nasty in places, in keeping with the original movie and with
the director's beginnings in anarchic splatter films. A sequence
storyboarded for the 1933 "Kong" but never filmed finally reaches the screen
here: chasing Ann and Kong into the interior of Skull Island, the ship's
crew tumbles down a ravine and is attacked by a variety of jumbo insects and
beasties, including carnivorous sea slugs that gobble one man down in slimy
gulps of peristalsis. This is bravura screen horror -- and definitely not
for the kiddies.

Jackson wants to give us a primal experience. Scratch that -- he wants to
pound us with primal experiences, but the 75 minutes leading up to the
appearance of Kong feel padded and inert. The film establishes the Great
Depression, Ann's desperate financial straits, her crush on rising young
playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), the panicky attempts of gonzo
filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black) to hire an actress and set sail for the
South Seas before his investors can have him arrested.

Once at sea, various crewmembers are introduced -- Thomas Kretschmann as the
captain of the tramp steamer, Jamie "Billy Elliot" Bell as the crazy cabin
boy, Evan Parke as Token Black Guy -- and you have to wonder why, since
they're probably all going to be dino kibble soon enough.

The 1933 film got all this over and done with in a matter of minutes, but
never mind that. Finally we get to the island, and to Jackson's vision of
the natives as an inbred horde of prehistoric savages; the emphasis isn't on
ooga-booga political incorrectness but full-on zombie terror. (Anyway,
there's enough sublimated racial dissonance later on, in the image of a
beautiful blond in the grip of a dark, bestial stranger three stories tall.
Jackson doesn't really go there, but you grad students can.)

Finally, Ann gets picked up by Kong -- hello, gorgeous -- and carried into
the island's interior, and the movie's true marvels begin. The director bows
low to the original film (I swear some of Kong's movements ape the skittery
stop-motion of Willis O'Brien's groundbreaking work) while going for broke
in key scenes. Kong fights off not one but three roaring Tyrannosauri, and
not just on level ground but ensnared in vines while suspended over a
crevasse.

Amazing stuff, and there's plenty more where that came from. Serkis's
movements, filmed and then digitally "clothed" with fur, give the great ape
a fluidity that can't be attained with puppetry or monkey-suits; this is
easily the most believable Kong yet. The sequences in which he and Ann bond
are remarkably good-natured -- who knew the big fella could laugh? -- and I
for one could have happily spent the entire movie in their company.

But Manhattan calls and there are period cars to be stomped upon. The final
New York sequences are exciting without being compelling; the sense of
connecting the dots of the 1933 film with a heavier digital pen is
unavoidable. Brody and Black are back on the scene; the former has little to
do given the new rapport between girl and gorilla, and as amusing as Black
is, he's too ironic a performer to approach the monomaniacal intensity of
Robert Armstrong in the original.

It comes down to, as it must, Kong swatting the attacking planes atop the
Empire State Building. This time, though, Ann is begging them to stop, and
the film suddenly stumbles into a sense of tragic loss it isn't fully
equipped to handle, even with an earlier scene of Kong chained and
"crucified" in a Broadway theater. In the end, the film's key line of
dialogue isn't "Twas beauty killed the beast," but a character's comment on
Denham's "unfailing ability to destroy the thing he loves." Peter Jackson
hasn't destroyed "Kong" -- I doubt that's possible -- but his love for
hollow extravaganza proves to be larger than his love for a great big monkey
or a great old movie.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jay" <piazzasanmarco@yahoo.com>
To: <tv@obbard.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 1:40 PM
Subject: Re: (TV) Television for the masses / Johnny Cash


> Ty:
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> King Kong, masterpiece?
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