Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), an actress from the world of vaudeville, finds herself out of a job in Depression-era New York. Her luck changes when she meets Carl Denham (Jack Black). Denham is an entrepreneur, raconteur, adventurer and filmmaker who is struggling to make a name for himself in the entertainment industry. Bold, ebullient and charismatic, Denham has a natural sense of showmanship and an appetite for greatness, which ultimately leads to catastrophe. This is the story of a group of explorers and documentary filmmakers who travel to the mysterious Skull Island (near Sumatra) to investigate legends of a giant gorilla named Kong. Once there, they discover that King Kong is a real creature, living in a massive jungle where creatures from prehistoric times have been protected and hidden for millions of years. As the explorers search for the great ape, their quest puts them up against both Kong and his dinosaur enemies. Ultimately, it is the attention of a beautiful human woman that soothes Kong long enough for him to be subdued by the explorers and shipped back to New York, where his bleak future involves being put on display in front of humans... but how long can even the mightiest shackles of man hold back an ape 25 feet tall?

Where do you start when talking about King Kong there are so many things that were great about the movie and their quite a few things about it that were flawed but overall the movie while flawed was still amazing and awesome. If you have seen the original or even the first remake keep in mind this is nothing like those two movies besides the basic plotline, it is Kong after all, but the movie goes in an entirely new direction this time around. The movie tries to add more drama and suspense to the human characters where the original was more about Kong. This works out really well in the end because this time they have really fleshed out the Beauty Ann and it truly makes you feel for the beast Kong when tragedy strikes. But the problem is while all this helps the end of the movie to be one of the more fantastic endings ever it mires the entire first of the movie and you almost find yourself bored even before you get to see the great ape. Someone needs to let Peter Jackson know it is ok to edit out parts of a movie every now and then to help the flow of the movie, it simply just takes to long for the movie to introduce Kong and get to the meat of the story.

I like Peter Jackson he is a fine director, he’s not the great director he is made out to be. He doesn’t seem to realize that he needs to edit more of his movie to make it more consumable for his audiences and to also make it a better movie. He also needs to decide if he wants to do creature feature films or if he wants to make blockbusters. He started his career with the creature features and it is obvious that he still enjoys doing them because he always seems to include a little of them in his mainstream movies but he goes overboard once more. The jungle was an opportunity to have fun with making terrifying creatures and they did it and seemed to enjoy doing it. The problem was it went on and on and on and the story again becomes bogged down as they escape one set of creatures to just run into another set and another set. Oh sure the special effects were marvelous in the movie and it was fun to see Kong fight not one but three T-Rexes but by the time they ended up in the pit and the centipedes and the spiders came rushing out I was ready to get back to the story.

This is a movie that should win best special effects hands down as the effects were eye-popping and jaw-dropping. The final fight scene on top of the empire state building had me reeling. I am not afraid of heights but when a movie does an amazing job of making heights look real, I get vertigo and the movie had me almost hurling into my popcorn it was that realistic. The ending is simply the best part of the movie and it makes everything up tell that point worth it.

I again have to question the casting of this movie when I heard Jack Black was going to play Carl I thought they were out of their minds and I was right. He’s not right for the role its as simple as that he is so far different from the original Carl and he brings nothing to the movie. The idea of Carl Denham is the moviemaker who will do anything and everything to get the shot and make a movie and Jack Black doesn’t pull that off, he’s just too comical. On the other hand Naomi Watts couldn’t have been a better pick for Ann as her relationship with Kong was magnificent and the tragic ending will almost have you in tears because of how well she sells it. I also liked Adrien Brody as he does a good job of adding a little angst into the plot and he is a great actor. They spent a lot of time with the bit actors in the movie and that was a mistake nobody cares about the bit actors the movie is about Beauty and the Beast and the man who brought them together. I really enjoyed the movie and it was great to see Kong done with the proper special effects he has always deserved, so go see it. It wasn’t the airplanes. It was Beauty that killed the Beast.
4 stars out of 5