King Kong
Starring: Adrien Brody, Naomi Watts, Jack Black
Directed by: Peter Jackson

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Rating: 4.5 (out of 5)

Holy sweet mother of crap, is this ever a great fucking movie. Normally, I avoid movies about giant, hairy apes unless they star Ron Jeremy. I've got GIGABYTES worth of those on my computer. It's not like I have a THING for Ron or anything...but the fact that he gets so much primo tail gives guys like me hope. Not that I'm NOT getting primo tail, because Morn is a fine, fine woman, and...

Shit, I'd better start this again, before I dig myself any deeper.

When I was a little kid, there were certain movies that just blew me away. I'd walk out of the theatre, convinced that I had just seen the greatest movie ever made. Then I'd see the next one, and THAT would be the best movie I'd ever seen. The cycle would continue over and over, and keep me heading to the theatre to see if these movies could be topped.

Coming this winter...Ron Jeremy IS "King Dong"!!!

Among the "best movies ever" were, in no particular order, Star Wars, The Muppet Movie, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, ET: The Extra Terrestrial, Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Khan, and even for a VERY short time The Goonies. Of course, maturity comes with age, and my list of favourites has changed over the years. Meaning that I've finally come to my senses and realized that The Goonies is indeed the finest motion picture ever to grace a movie screen. Sloth rules, bitches!!!!

But for a little over 3 hours the other night, I felt like I was a little kid again - although thankfully I didn't have to tow my sister along. King Kong completely captivated every living cell of my being. As I sat there, my ass getting progressively number by the hour, I was transformed back to that childhood place where wonder and excitement rocked my right down to my taint. Everything about this movie was note-perfect. Sure, it was flawed, but that pleasure centre of my brain completely rendered that pesky "logic" inert.

In the theatre, this was the perfect, life-changing movie. A perfect 5 out of 5. Unfortunately, logic came back with a vengeance about an hour after I arrived home, and as a result, the rating took a hit. But no amount of logic in the world can take away that glee, that wonder, that I felt in the theatre.

"The sharp teeth and razor-like talons on those dinosaurs are no match for my STICK!"

Excuse me, I just came a little bit. Which is odd, because apparently it's Peter Jackson that I'm jerking off, not myself. Regardless, this is the best remake in the history of film.

The movie opens in the midst of the Great Depression. People are living in shantytowns. Food is scarce, other than soup kitchens. A small percentage of the people control most of the money, while everybody else struggles to survive. Essentially, it's the same as today, only gas doesn't cost 3 dollars a fucking gallon.

Ann Darrow (Watts) is a plucky Vaudeville performer, blissfully unaware that her particular brand of art will soon be deader than disco. She gives her all, performing for half-empty theatres every night. But she's more than just a light comedienne...she's an Actress with a capital A, longing to get a part in one of Jack Driscoll's plays. Apparently, she doesn't realize that she's Naomi Watts, who normally can't even hold her own in shit like The Ring 2. I pitied her, and not just because her character was starving. I mean come on...The Ring 2? Nobody deserves that.

"What? Nick and Jessica are getting divorced? They seemed so happy!"

Meanwhile, Black plays Carl Denham, a hack filmmaker who can't seem to get the respect - or the money - of his studio backers. They review bits of his latest "opus" and consider selling the footage as stock. This is when you really get the sense that this takes place over 70 years ago. Today, they'd take the shitty footage and release it as an "event" movie with no coherent narrative, then blame "piracy" when nobody wanted to see it.

For some reason we're never let in on, he's come into possession of a mysterious map. This will lead him to an island that doesn't even appear in atlases...a primitive land known as...wait for it...Skull Island.

An aside: Why in the name of FUCK would you WANT to go to a place called "Skull Island"? I mean, I GET that it's mysterious, and exotic, and nobody has ever really seen it, but the name "Skull Island" should clue you the fuck into WHY it's a mystery. Not for nothing, but let's say the local mall all of a sudden has a store named "Taliban's Anthrax, Terrorism, Assrape, And Jihad SuperMart". I'm NOT going there, even out of idle curiosity. It's plainly obvious that the place is fucking EVIL, which is also the same reason that I won't go to Wal-Mart or Old Navy. It just makes SENSE, dammit.

There it is folks...Skull Island. Located just south of Disembowlment Peninsula in the Dangerous Fucking Monster Sea. If you hit Certain Violent Death Archipelago, you've gone too far.

Naturally, the studio execs won't bankroll Carl's trip to the plainly evil island. Because that's money that could be better spent by bankrolling another Ring sequel. Undeterred, Carl makes a run for the harbour, where his boat is waiting.

Along the way, he manages to meet Ann and convince her to come on a long sea voyage with him so he can make "movie" with her. Ann agrees, partially because it's the Depression, she's starving, and apparently Jack Driscoll is writing the script. This might seem foolish to most people, considering that I've seen potential date-rapists making more plausible offers to total strangers. Then again, she was somehow convinced to make The Ring 2, so she's obviously not the brightest bulb on the tree.

So, who is this "Jack Driscoll"? Well, for starters, he's Adrien Brody. But more to the point, he's a guy who's writing the movie for Carl for some unknown reason. I mean, he's obviously a respected playwright, so the fact that he's resigned himself to penning a cheap talkie seems a little odd. Then again, I'm a writer, and if someone came to me tomorrow and asked me to write The Ring 3 I'd be on that like a fat kid on an M&M. Jack is on the ship, and hands Carl 15 pages of a script. Carl needs more, but Jack has more important things to do. So, Carl does what any other Hollywood producer would do...he tricks him into staying on the ship long enough that it leaves, giving Jack no choice but to stay on and write the rest of the picture. Trust me folks, I've been sucked in by less. I'm talking to YOU, Fresh magazine.

That's the problem with working on a Peter Jackson movie. He blows all the cash on CGI, so the actors have to work as crew.

The ship is staffed by a number of salty-dog types. But for the most part, they're unimportant. I don't want to give anything away, but most of them should be wearing red Star Trek uniforms.

Eventually, they get to the island, and believe it or not, it's not the all-inclusive resort that a place like "Skull Island" might lead you to expect. They encounter, in no order, primitive natives, enormous bugs, bats the size of hang gliders, and dinosaurs. Oh yeah, and an ENORMOUS FUCKING APE, who we finally get to see an hour and 17 minutes into the movie.

Ann finds herself "sacrificed" to the ape, and all manner of Hell breaks loose. But, in a nice twist, the ape (Kong, in case you don't get it) takes a shine to her. It turns out that he's not some murderous beast with a secret love for mediocre Australian actresses...he's just kind of lonely and doesn't know his own strength. After all, he's the ONLY giant ape on the island, which makes one wonder where he came from...but again, that "logic" will get you into trouble. Just go with it.

"Stop...HAMMERTIME!"

Of the roughly 10,000 things I loved about this movie, number one has to be the portrayal of Kong. In the 1933 original, he somehow fell in "love" with Ann, who was terrified of him. In the horrible 1976 remake, it was more or less the same thing. But here, he's beautifully realized as someone who just needs some companionship. There's no interspecies jungle fever here. He just LIKES her. He sees her kind of as a pet, or an entertainer (Kong just LOVES her vaudeville shtick). It's a relationship based on part possession, part protection.

The credit for this lies simply in one place...actor Andy Serkis. He does the same thing here that he did in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy...he acts the part wearing about a billion motion-capture pins, and the filmmakers animate over him. As far as I'm concerned Serkis deserved an Oscar - not just a nomination, an actual AWARD - for his work in The Two Towers. He deserves it again here. But of course, he won't get it. His kind of "performance" is brushed off by awards-types. Animators alone cannot portray the complex range of emotions on display here.

But Peter Jackson deserves huge kudos as well. He is truly the master of the big adventure epic. He's taken a basic story and turned it into a huge adventure epic of masterful proportions. There are scenes in this movie that are truly like nothing else I've ever seen. Kong fighting off 3 T-Rexes while protecting Ann is one of the best "fight" scenes ever committed to film. And Kong's reaction after it's over...basically snorting at Ann (who seemed to have been shunning him) as if to say "Uh, you're WELCOME" is just sheer genius. It's perfection.

"Aw...who's a good boy? Who's a good, enormous, murderously violent boy? YOU are! Yes you are!"

It's also nice to see Jack Black tone it down a bit. His is easily the best "human" performance in the movie. He's a dick, but he's also capable of being scared, concerned, sad, and just downright angry. I've always thought he was a bit of a one-trick pony with his over-the-top energetic stuff, but his conflicted character here is a nice change of pace. Of course, we're also treated to a shot of him looking off-camera in awe/fear about 5 times too many, but it's a small price to pay. Seriously, it happens about every 10 minutes. We get it, guys.

The rest of the cast is serviceable. Brody is a decent reluctant hero, and Watts is a decent frightened heroine. This isn't a movie about performances, and they know it and don't try to pull focus from the eye candy.

And oh brother, is it EVER sweet to look at. This is something like the 6th-most-expensive movie ever made, and for the most part it's all on display. If you look for it, you can even see individual hairs on Kong blowing in a mild breeze.

Now THIS is what I call a "Rumble In The Jungle"...although to be fair, Ali could kick both their asses.

It's even a little heartbreaking. There's one scene in New York (oh come on, you KNOW that Kong gets taken to New York...that's no spoiler) where he discovers ice for the first time. He's intrigued, but eventually he just LOVES it. He glides and slides across a frozen pond with Ann in a scene that is just beautiful, funny, and heartbreaking...since you know what's going to happen to him. Despite knowing his eventual fate, I couldn't help but wish deep down inside that the movie would end there.

Alas, it's not perfect. In fact, I'm a little annoyed with certain aspects of it. For example: how did a low-life like Carl GET the map? Did he win it in a card game? Was it inside a Bazooka Joe wrapper? That would have been nice to know. And that's just one of about 5 or 6 questions that never get answered. Normally, I wouldn't mind, but the movie's over 3 hours long. How do you make something THAT LONG and still manage to have a plot with more holes in it than Tupac's rental car? Some of the CGI isn't quite as convincing as it could be, and for some reason, Jackson is suddenly in love with slow motion.

But, like I said before, the movie is so effective on so many levels that you just don't give a rat's ass until it's over.

Kong learns the hard way how tough it is for some people to get a cab in New York.

It might be an early call, but unless I see something truly life-altering between now and December 31, I'm pretty sure this is my favourite movie of the year.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've just popped The Goonies into my DVD player. Get 'em, Sloth!

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