Film Review
Surprise! ‘King Kong’ Will Leave
You Bored if You’re Looking for Action

By: Andrew Puzick (December 15, 2005)

Peter Jackson has finally fulfilled his dream of remaking his favorite childhood movie, “King Kong.” In this film, Jackson stays true to the original movie by keeping scenes that captivated the audience in the Thirties, while adding his own imagination in the process. For example, in the original scene in which Kong fights the tyrannosaurus, Jackson spices it up by adding two more beasts for Kong to battle.

The movie starts out in the depression era with producer Carl Denham (Jack Black) desperately searching for an actress to play a role in his movie. He eventually finds and lures Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) to play the lead role and screenwriter Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) to write a script. Denham has also hired a boat run by hunters to take them to the island (convenient huh?). What he doesn’t tell them, is that they are heading to a remote island on which no man has set foot for thousands of years (for good reason too).

After about 90 minutes of small talk and sappy romantic scenes, the crew runs ashore onto the fabled Skull Island. They stumble upon voodoo-crazed savages, who take Ann as a sacrifice to their simian god, a giant 20-foot silverback gorilla named Kong. He promptly snatches up the girl and runs off into the jungle carrying her in his giant monkey palm.

The crew then races through the unexplored jungle after Kong, who is desperate to hang on to his female prize. There they encounter more than just giant apes, as they race through a valley of stampeding Dinos, fight off swarms of insects and vicious giant bats and all the other CGI monsters that Jackson feels compelled to add to all his films.

Sounds exciting doesn’t it? Sounds full of action and suspense right? Wrong. During this entire ordeal Jackson tries his best to slow it down and dull it up by adding scenes of Kong and Ann playing around and admiring the sunset for about 50 minutes (OK, I’m exaggerating, but it seemed that long). After sitting through these boring scenes, the audience is rewarded with a 15-minute scene in which Kong fights the three T-Rexes, which is a generally good but highly unrealistic scene (jungle vines holding up both a T-Rex and Kong?)

I think I may have missed some of the end because I was blinded by tears of boredom, but I am pretty certain it was as just as unexciting as the rest of the film.

Movie-wise, the visual effects were clean and very well done, and the acting was okay despite Jack Black’s presence. But, being a man of action, if you’re going to make me sit in a theater for 187 minutes, I need to see at least 150 minutes of action. Honestly, I think the 1933 version was more exciting! I don’t think this review will change anybody’s mind and people will still flock to see the film, and Jackson will make his millions, but if you leave the theater bored and angry don’t say you weren’t warned.