King Kong - 2005

Peter Jackson has (for me) always been suspect as a maker of major motion pictures. Does he have admirable drive? Sure. Does he know how to crack the whip and keep things moving? Sure. Can he be trusted to not run off with the studio's $200 million? Sure. But there's more to making quality entertainment than being able to muster the troops and guard the bank. You have to care about the viewer as well. And Jackson, frat boy that he is at heart, can never quite bring himself to remember that. (His complete disregard for continuity nearly destroyed The Lord of the Rings.)

With that said, and given that I'm always wary of remakes anyway, it's fair to say I approached Mr. Jackson's $200 million version of King Kong with a healthy dose of skepticism. Was this a film that needed to be made? Really? Why? What could Peter Jackson say with a remake of Merian C. Cooper's classic 1933 film that hadn't been said just fine in the original? Would Jackson abandon his contempt for the audience and pay attention to the details this time? (LOTR had a lot of juicy detail to be sure, but those details were embedded in areas where his control was secondary: set design, costume design etc. The areas he had complete control over - direction and editing - were full of examples of a director who thinks "They'll never notice anyway.")

It didn't take long for me to have my answers. The first thing that jumped out at me right away were the horrible casting decisions. Adrian Brody is the worst choice for a male love interest since, well, since nobody. He's the worst. Andy Serkis proves once again that when you take all those cute little locator balls off of him and stick him in front of the camera to actually act he is simply not up to it. I can only assume he gets work with Jackson because he shares Jackson's frat boy mentality and that, because of this, Jackson finds his presence comforting. Either that or he has some photos that Jackson doesn't want to see the light of day.

And then there's Jack Black. Ah Jack Black... What can one say about Mr. Black's performance here? Off-hand, undisciplined and distracting are words that spring to mind but maybe the most appropriate word is, "inappropriate". The comic relief should not be the central character (and by sheer force of personality Black makes himself the central human character whether Jackson and Co intended him to be or not). While his part wasn't written to be comic relief Black doesn't really know any other way to play things, and normally that's fine because he's a comedic actor and as such he's among the best there is. But here it simply doesn't work as he spends three hours with his tongue barely concealed within his cheek.

The other reason this Dodo doesn't fly is the length. Jackson, its seems, has had one too many conversations with James Cameron and the latter has obviously told him "Pete don't let anybody tell you that anything you shot shouldn't go in the film. I say if you shot it, use it." and Jackson has taken his advice to heart. (For the record I'm of the opinion that Cameron's "Aliens" - the theatrical release - is the best movie ever made. But it was made before he had the clout to demand final cut and all of his subsequent films have suffered from his inability to edit himself.)

One way they could have shortened the film (and made it immeasurably better in the process) would have been to remove the entire 'spider pit' scene. This scene is more evidence of Jackson's frat boy mentality; at least I hope it is. Because if it isn't it means that Jackson simply doesn't know the definition of the word "gross" or understand that "gross" should never be a word you want attached to your wanna be blockbuster. I'd register a guess that this scene is the single biggest reason the film stalled at the box office.

"Did you see King Kong last night?"
"Yeah."
"Well?"
"It was okay, except there was this really gross scene..."

Hey, that's the kind of word of mouth that'll have the ladies scrambling for tickets! I remember being in the theater and watching nearly half the crowd turn away and many of them go "Ewwwwwwww". A few even walked out. I'm sure if someone pressed Jackson on why he felt it necessary to include this huge gross-out in the middle of his love story he'd say something about artistic integrity. BS. The integrity of a work of art depends largely on how the piece (regardless of medium) works as a whole and this scene undermines everything else about King Kong. The movie, already on the shaky ground established by questionable casting decisions and the nagging feeling that it lacks justification, never really recovers from it.

And what about that justification? Well, the rest of the movie doesn't add anything to the essential narrative laid down in 1933. It doesn't illuminate any hidden streams of meaning that eluded me when I watched the original. In short, it's not a contemporary updating of a classic, it's just a re-filming of a classic using modern techniques. The only things that are different are that in this filming the relationship between the beauty and the beast is a two-way one (a twist introduced in the Dino DeLaurentis 1976 version), and Jackson includes the spider pit scene which Cooper had the good sense to leave on the cutting room floor.

King Kong then is one of the great follies of modern cinema. A vanity project done by exactly the type of person you don't want doing a vanity project: a vain person. Should you ever be tempted to pony up money for the DVD, don't. Buy the original instead and enjoy some first rate movie making.