King Kong 2005
Regardless of the cast or the director, the problem with King Kong is that it is just an incredibly depressing story. A giant gorilla is taken from his home, put on display in New York, and then falls to his death from the Empire State Building. Honestly, what is the point of this movie?
Peter Jackson has put together a visually spectacular movie, but I think he failed to really rise above the material and make something worthwhile. Some of the acting, Jack Black in particular, just isn’t very good. And even some of the visuals just look like textbook examples of CGI rather than good filmmaking. Kong looks great close up with the realistic eyes and facial expressions, but from a distance he invariably looks like CGI. As he goes on a rampage in New York the things he tears up also look fake, for instance the theater seats go spewing like a fountain.
Because the movie is so long and takes so long to get started (you don’t see Kong for the first hour) I would watch a little of the DVD and then come back. After a drugged and chained Kong is put on the stage in New York I decided it was just too depressing to keep watching. But after watching some of the extras I went ahead and watched the last thirty minutes of the even more depressing part of him being shot repeatedly and falling to the ground. That’s where Jack Black says the famous last line “It was beauty that killed the beast.” What a crock! It was greed and inhumanity that took him from his island. This might have played okay in 1933, but in 2005 it is just kind of pathetic.
On the DVD extras they have a feature-length segment of post-production diaries which gives a glimpse into certain aspects of making movies like setting up miniatures, recording sound effects, re-recording 90% of the dialogue, adding 3,000 visual effects, and filming add-ins where they realized in editing the film that they don’t have all the film they need and call back the actors to film little bits and pieces. The DVD also includes a fake documentary on the history of Skull Island that offers some insight into what was going on on that island and a decent documentary of 1933 New York City. There isn’t a “making of” documentary to be found, which is a bit of a disappointment and the diaries are too long and technical for most people. Since the diaries are for post-production you don’t see the original filming or very much of the actors.
Anyway, while there is some great eye candy here, this movie was a big disappointment for me since the story is such a let-down. I’ll give it a C.
Owned on: Digital