King Kong
(2005)
review by Suicide Blonde

The original King Kong is one of those movies that’s become embedded in the public consciousness so that even those who haven’t seen it know about it. It’s been often imitated (and even remade back in 1976) but never duplicated. So it took Peter Jackson considerable guts, as well as the good will he earned as director of the Lord of the Rings movies, to take on such a beloved icon and put his own spin on it.

The results, while not quite perfect, are visually stunning and genuinely moving in a way I haven’t seen since…well, since Return of the King.

The story is the same, with a few embellishments along the way. Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts, perfect in the role) is a struggling vaudeville actress who’s already gone weeks without a paycheck and is subsisting off soup kitchen fare when the theater closes and she’s without a job. Desperately in search of a leading actress for his new safari film is Carl Denham (Jack Black), who’s got possession of a map to a mysterious island he thinks would be the ideal location for his movie. Along for the ride is Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), the screenwriter for Denham’s movie, who soon starts to have feelings for Ann.

The film-makers and the ship’s salty crew arrive at the aptly named Skull Island, and that’s when the film really kicks in. The human inhabitants of Skull Island (scary by themselves) waste no time in offering up Ann in a ritual sacrifice. The film and ship crew arrive just in time to see a huge gorilla carry Ann away, and set off in pursuit

Skull Island is a terrifying place that makes Jurassic Park look like Disneyland. Poor Ann is carried off by Kong, and soon discovers the bones of the previous women who’ve been sacrificed to Kong. When it’s clear she can’t escape, the resourceful Ann makes friends with Kong – in one delightful scene she uses her vaudeville tricks to entertain the ape, doing backflips and juggling rocks. Later, of course, she does try to escape, only to encounter ravenous dinosaurs.

Meanwhile, the menfolk are having a worse time. Chased and eaten by dinosaurs, attacked by Kong, and in a truly scary scene, trapped in a pit of nasty giant insects. By the time the men finally rescue Ann, she’s made a bond with Kong, whose refusal to let Ann leave, combined with Denham’s desire to exploit “The Eighth Wonder of the World” lead to a tragic finale in New York City.

Jackson’s film is part tribute, part embellishment, and part showcase. His love for the original shines through, not only in the faithful re-creation of the story and its characters, but in the humanity he gives Kong. Jackson’s Kong is not a monster – he’s heroic, gentlemanly in his own way, and appreciates a beautiful sunset. His love for Ann is the greatest thing about him, yet it’s his doom, and by the end of the movie he knows this too.

Special effects have improved a great deal since the 1930s, to say the least, and Jackson, true to form, uses everything that’s available to him. Kong is a wonderful creation – you forget you’re watching computer animation – from the realistic gorilla walk and bellow to the sadness in his eyes. The finale, atop the Empire State Building, is breathtaking, as Jackson uses height to both terrify the audience (my palms were sweaty) and demonstrate the loneliness and futility of Kong’s last stand.

And Jackson has put his own stamp on the story. Particularly in the first half, there’s much of his trademark goofy humor (and a nice in-joke for fans of Dead Alive/Braindead), but fortunately it’s not laid on too thick. There is also Jackson’s tendency to stretch out his action scenes a bit too long. This was a flaw in the Lord of the Rings movies as well, and I’d overlook it and give the film five skulls save for two other flaws.

A minor but annoying flaw is the buildup without payoff for one of the crew members, Jimmy (Jamie Bell). In the end, he’s simply forgotten, as if Jackson was so anxious to get Kong and Ann back to New York City that he forgot about poor Jimmy.

A more serious flaw is Jack Black as Carl Denham. We’re asked to believe that Denham gets people to travel to an uncharted island to be in his movie when he has no money to offer anyone and is not a particularly successful film-maker. He has only surface charm, and even that is very thin. There’s nothing to explain the loyalty of his assistant Preston (Colin Hanks). Black could have done better if the role had been rewritten somewhat, but as it stands he simply doesn’t have the charisma necessary to make us believe that anyone would tag along with him to Skull Island.

But in the end, what we remember is Kong and Ann. Naomi Watts gives a wonderful performance – beautiful but not too glamorous (she’s loveliest when she’s bedraggled and muddy after fleeing dinosaurs), innocent but not stupid. She understands Kong and knows how wrong it is to take him away from his island home. There’s a scene of the two of them in Central Park, sliding on the ice while Christmas trees twinkle in the background, that makes it clear this movie is, at its heart, a love story.

Dino De Laurentiis, when making his ill-advised King Kong remake in 1976, famously remarked that “Nobody cry when Jaws die. When the monkey die, everybody gonna cry.” I don’t know how many cried at Dino’s film (I know many who cried for their money back), but there are sure to be tears at the end of Jackson’s. And he can be proud knowing he’s made a movie that, if not quite up to the original, is worthy to stand alongside it.