Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle

One of the films I saw over the Christmas holiday was Peter Jackson's King Kong. Now I've been trying to think of something profound or witty (or even reasonably clever) to say about this film, but, alas, everything that can be said about this film has been said already; and by people far more intelligent, handsome/pretty, better dressed etc, than me. So all I can really offer is a pathetic watered down analysis.

First, it's too long, far too long. Everyone's said it, and it's true. I believe the run time is about 37 and half hours: it should be an hour and half tops. Seriously, Peter. You have a monkey, you have a building, you have a girl. An hour and half is plenty of time for you to tell that story. But as long as it was, they still could have added a scene where Naomi Watts grabbed a coat, a jack, a shawl, anything, to cover herself up in the final scene. Winter in New York and on top of the Empire State Building? If the planes didn't kill her, then pneumonia certainly will.

The special effects are, indeed, special and effective. But, as with the run time, it’s all too much. Yes, it's awfully impressive that you can have a fake gorilla fight three fake dinosaurs, but when it goes on as long as the Ali-Frazier fight, it becomes significantly less impressive. Similarly, it's glorious that you can have Kong slide and scamper around on the ice of Central Park and that his fur moves the way fur is supposed to move and all that, but do you need to include that 20 minute vaudville routine when you're building to climax? I think a far better use of 1.5 million special effects artists would have been putting them to work on making Adrian Brody look somewhat human.

That said, I did like the film and was generally entertained (well, until the afore mentioned ice skating sequence, which was, frankly, just plain silly). The casting was first rate (Jack Black and Naomi Watts in particular); and the story is interesting (giant gorilla smashes stuff real good" is a classic plot); but I really don't think this film topped the achievements of the original film. The effects of the original Kong were MORE revolutionary at the time than WETA's effects are now. The only real improvement is found the scene when Kong, looking for Naomi Watts' character, picks up random blondes off the street and throws them over his shoulder when he discovers they're not Watts.

But of course alll of this is moot when compared to the profound moral lesson articulated in the final frames by Jack Black: it was beauty that killed the beast... and obviously guns... and probably the fall of the Empire State Building helped a little bit.