FrancisPage

King Kong

How It Rates: ***
Starring: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Adventure Violence and Mild Language

Remaking King Kong is like remaking Gone With The Wind or Citizen Kane, but if you're going to redo an epic, at least put it in the hands of an epic director. Peter Jackson's a fine choice. And he's made a fine film... a very long fine film. At three hours, the new Kong is a director's cut DVD version unleashed into theaters. It's big, bad, and bloated. It wants to be so many things -- art-house romance, period piece, CGI adventure, monster movie -- and by ramming it all in, it nearly forgets its one redeeming thread: the doomed romance of a beauty and the beast.

We don't see Kong himself until more than a half hour into the film. That gives more than plenty of time for set-up: Naomi Watts slips into the Fay Wray role as Ann Darrow, a struggling vaudeville actress looking for work in Great Depression-era New York City. She runs across madman movie director Carl Denham (Black), who's looking for a lead in an adventure picture, if he can ever get it finished. The studio threatens to kill the picture and its runaway budget, so Denham quickly signs up Darrow, grabs his crew, and ships out of New York. They set sail aboard the filthy steamer of an animal hunter bound for Singapore. But really, Denham is heading everybody for Skull Island, an uncharted, unknown land mass filled with restless natives, bloodthirsty dinosaurs and the aformentioned ape.

A romance blossoms between Darrow and playwright Jack Driscoll (Brody), who's writing the picture's screenplay. He gets trapped on board the boat before he can get off and get back to more artistic pursuits. One wonders how the heck a cultured writer hooked up with a snake like Denham, but shh, shh; this movie doesn't need to be any longer.

After the genesis of a romance-at-sea movie, we finally hit the action track. The ship runs aground along the rocky shores of Skull Island. Denham is just too eager to get out and shoot film. Everything goes downhill when the film crew disembarks and runs into one of the natives, who then turn around and kidnap Darrow as a sacrifice to you-know-who.

The new Kong is not your father's Kong and not even your grandfather's Kong, and thankfully, not even Donkey Kong. He's an ape with scars, matted fur and serious anger control issues. He looks like he's had a life, and it becomes all too clear it's a sad and lonely one. Beating up dinosaurs and chewing up human sacrifices doesn't even approach therapy. But then Darrow comes along, and this big lug of a gorilla softens up. So much of this film's value lies in the scenes of Darrow and Kong, whose CGI expressions were molded from actor Andy Serkis (who you will recall set the mold for Gollum in Lord Of The Rings). Kong roars and growls and beats his chest, but he has depth, emotion and a scary charm. Woman and beast read each other like two long-lost souls looking for true love. It's all in the eyes, and Jackson gives us plenty of nuance.

But things get cluttered up. While the ship's crew is trying to rescue Darrow, they run into the dinosaurs, which briefly turns the film into Jurassic Park. Then they end up at the bottom of a cliff infested with huge spiders and snakelike creatures who've probably crawled over from Aliens. Although they're fun to watch, way too much time is spent on them. Eventually Kong is captured and shipped back to New York, things get out of hand again, and we come to the landmark sequence on top of the Empire State Building, where more emotion is milked until Kong meets his demise.

Peter Jackson can handle long films. The Lord Of The Rings trilogy was long because it was a long story. King Kong is long because it wants a lot of depth and a lot of action. Thirty minutes shorter and this film would still have it. Cut the filler scenes detailing the friendship between two shipmates. Toss one of the dinosaur scenes. All of this can go on a DVD. The name of the film is King Kong, not Long Kong.