Director: Peter Jackson
Year Released: 2005
Rating: 2.0
Comic book movie of the Cooper novel - this being the third film of the over-grown monkey who should have been left on ... Skull Island! - that starts off as formulaic girl-can't-buy-luck story in New York City before becoming a romance-on-a-boat story, then morphs into Jurassic Park for a stretch before returning to New York City (how I don't know - is that boat big enough for Kong?) for the famed skyscraper scenes. I don't know what's happened to the Jackson of the Meet the Feebles or Dead/Alive days with their quick and dirty (and dirt cheap) storylines, but now it's as if he's trying to out-Spielberg Spielberg (and certainly out-duel James Cameron), never knowing when to let up. It's a ninety-minute movie in bloated form, playing for audience sympathy for the CGI-ape (well-played by Andy Serkis, who's quickly becoming the Olivier of CGI creature roles), making its point early on and beating it to death, all like a run-on sentence. I agree with Kent Beeson of the Western Civilization that there's a real disparity in the quality between the Naomi Watts plus Kong scenes and virtually everything else - the two have chemistry, let me tell you - but then again I also agree with my own assessment of the movie's ultimate moral upon leaving the theatre: that loving a blonde too much will eventually get you killed.
