Being a nostalgia addict, I had
to see the King Kong remake on opening week and it had to be at a real
theater. I do not wait for the DVD with stuff like this. This particular
film really brought me in touch with my great-grandparents, great uncles,
great aunts, etc., most of whom died off by the 1980s. Mind you, I would
guess that a few of them probably saw the original 1933 film in some
Louisville theater that has been torn down in once nice neighborhoods that
are now decayed ghettos. I would even imagine that a showing of the original
was a date night that came before a marriage and children who were to become
my grandparents. Take your girl to see King Kong. It seems like a moment in
the 1930s that is worth replicating. On that premise, Peter Jackson's remake
delivered.
Simpler times... A love affair
between a big ol' ape and Fay Wray and we think we live in times of deviant
perverted behavior nowadays. That movie was not really a monster movie at
all and certainly not a horror film. The ancient Greeks wrote all the good
stories and we've just been recycling them ever since. If you think about
it, even the movie Billy Jack is really the same goddamned story as King
Kong. Considering the simplicity of the story and the fact that the classic
Greek stories always work, this movie almost can't be ruined as long as it
has a budget and the monkey doesn't look silly.
I went into the theater thinking
that the movie would probably be visually stunning with a good looking
monkey, beautiful computer generated effects, a shitload of product
placement and no real substance. I also expected the Fay Wray role to be
played by some flat-ironed blonde hack actress with big tits who is
probably afiliated with both Scientology and PETA that would be the perfect
image for suburban teenaged boys to think about when they jack off. Casting
like that insults me but fortunately they casted Naomi Watts who was not
incredible but at least she almost looked like a old-time actress in the
film. I was pleasantly surprised to find that King Kong was a period piece
set in the 1930s, which is something I had so badly wished for with
Spielberg's War of the Worlds. The 2002 version of The Time Machine was a
great looking period piece (although it became an absolute mess of a movie
in the last 30 minutes). The acting in King Kong is a little better than
you'd expect in a Star Wars movie but wasn't great. Jack Black did not pull
off this particular role. The product placement was there but it actually
added to the 1930s feel because that era was heavily commercialized anyway.
It's a three hour movie and it really only needed to be two and a half hours
long.
No complaints with King Kong.
It's a well-spent $8.50 for sure and just getting that old-time cinema
feeling from a good looking modern movie is an amazing feat for Peter
Jackson. It's really nice A- movie.
