Kong is an entertaining, over-the-top, two-hour thrill ride. Unfortunately, it's three hours long. It's a spectacular in parts, though, and worth seeing. I give it three stars and will now move on to what irritated me. I can debunk the following Kong myths:
Adrien Brody is an action hero. If I could take a baseball bat to any actor's skull, it would be his. Not since Ethan Hawke's arrival has a scrawny candy-ass acted this bad-ass. Watching him stirs something playground in me. When I see his writer character suddenly and inexplicably going Ninja on velociraptors, I want to just pummel the pansy.
Naomi Watts' performance is Oscar-worthy. She's great. But it's a one-note character and a one-note performance. It's the exact same slack-jawed note that Denise Richards hit, albeit poorly, in Starship Troopers.
This movie revolutionizes action films, just like the original did. No. It's a really well made popcorn movie, but what exactly haven't we seen before? This era's Kong is plainly Jurassic Park.
This movie revolutionizes special effects. Kong is really impressive, and the streets of New York are just brilliant. But there's no getting around the fact that a lot of this film looks fake, especially when live actors are superimposed on backgrounds (or CGI characters) and the focal length or lighting is inconsistent within a single shot. The human eye, familiar with how light works, knows it's not real. The film is never so fake as when they shoot Watts through heavy gauze and put her next to a digital (and very clear) Kong. Because of Peter Jackson Love, this film will win scads of technical awards, but the fact remains that Dorkass and I laughed out loud at its fakeness.
Kong is what happens when no one says no to a filmmaker. It feels indulgently long, and it is. Seemingly no idea was discarded. While in the theatre, I thought about Steven Spielberg's Jaws. On the set, the mechanical shark never worked (plus it looked incredibly fake), so a budget- and time-constrained young Spielberg was forced to compromise and show less and less of the shark. The result? Drastically heightened suspense. People were terrified by mere implication. Less turned out to be much, much more. With Kong, we have the opposite. No choices needed to be made, so they weren't. Take as much time and money as you want, Pete. If Jackson had filmed the opening scene of Jaws, we would have followed the shark for 15 minutes as it leapt through the air and rummaged through sunken ships, possibly learning English along the way, and then we would have followed Chrissie down the shark's intestinal track. But is that really better?