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Home  Hollywood Movies King Kong
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Thursday, 01 June 2006 00:00 |
Director: Peter Jackson
Screenwriters: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson
Based on the story by: Merian C. Cooper, Edgar Wallace
Producers: Jan Blenkin, Carolynne Cunningham, Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson
Director of photography: Andrew Lesnie
Cast:
Ann Darrow: Naomi Watts
Carl Denham: Jack Black
Jack Driscoll: Adrien Brody
Capt. Englehorn: Thomas Kretschmann
Preston: Colin Hanks
Kong/Lumpy: Andy Serkis
Hayes: Evan Parke
Jimmy: Jamie Bell
Firmly believing that nothing succeeds like excess, Jackson and an army of technicians up the visual-effects ante with each passing minute. The wonder and excitement this initially inspires ebb gradually away in the third hour. It never completely disappears -- the movie does have a wow finale, after all. But expect debates to break out in theater lobbies over that blurry line between tongue-in-cheek exaggeration and directorial self-indulgence.
Following up on the triumph of his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, Jackson has a slam-dunk worldwide boxoffice hit in "Kong." This is spectacle filmmaking at its best, where a director is in tune with the story's underlying emotions and his own boyish love for adventure fantasy. While sticking in outline to the 1933 classic by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, Jackson has added (and padded) the tale with action sequences, knowing dialogue and plot twists that wink back at audiences familiar with the original.
Jackson and longtime co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens envelop you in a world of movies: "Kong" is not just a remake of an old film but a movie about the making of such a movie. Realizing memories of the original linger in the minds of many, the writers retain the Depression-era setting while turning the voyage to Skull Island into a movie-making expedition.
Jack Black plays a risk-taking, Orson Wellesian producer-director, Carl Denham, who books a tramp steamer to uncharted South Pacific territory in hopes of turning out a travelogue/adventure film. When backers get the jitters and his actress takes a powder, he suddenly needs to bundle the crew aboard ship with a new actress overnight.
He persuades down-on-her-luck vaudevillian Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) to slip into the other actress' costumes -- both are size 4 -- to star opposite B-movie leading man Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler, having great fun with the part). Denham all but kidnaps hot young playwright-turned-film-scenarist Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody). Because no cabin is available, Jack must hammer out the script in a cage meant for dangerous animals in the ship's hold, one of several amusing digs at the movie business throughout "Kong."
The crew consists of testy Capt. Englehorn (Thomas Kretschmann), his level-headed assistant Preston (Colin Hanks), the eager youngster Jimmy (Jamie Bell) and the young man's steady minder in first mate Hayes (Evan Parke). Even during the ocean voyage, where mostly character development is taking place, Jackson builds tension through the steady beats of moving engine pistons, crew members sucking on cigarettes, fearful glances out to sea and composer James Newton Howard's musical swells.
On Skull Island, where the ship runs aground in a fog bank, the CGI really kicks in. The exaggerated topography takes in the fossilized remains of an ancient civilization, twisted and deformed vegetation, skulls and bones everywhere and ominous deep chasms spanned by rotting tree trunks, all this crawling with predatory life forms.
In an encounter with frightening-looking aborigines, the natives capture Ann to use as a sacrifice to the island's No. 1 Alpha male. Kong doesn't put in an appearance until the 70-minute mark, but he lives up to his billing. Jackson's go-to guy for live performance capture, Andy Serkis -- he played Gollum in "Rings" -- "acts" the Kong role, bringing a welter of emotions to his facial expressions and body contortions while encased in a gorilla muscle suit. Using the motion capture, Kong is then rendered on the screen with digital animation and miniature environments enhanced with CG matte paintings.
The courtship begins in earnest when Ann becomes the first eatable creature to ever provoke Kong's interest. In desperation for her life, Ann performs her vaudeville routines for the gorilla. This key relationship then develops logically and even whimsically. She represents to him a respite from brutality and killing while she recognizes in him the years of loneliness and ferocity that has lead to his "anger issues."
Surprisingly, the visual effects on the isle are sometimes shaky. A fight between Kong and three T. rex beasts goes on too long. A Brontosaurus stampede with actors running here and there among huge feet is phony looking, a puzzling lapse from a director in love with visual effects. A sequence involving huge sucking, biting, burrowing, devouring creatures and Jimmy machine-gunning them off the bodies of his compatriots is downright silly.
After Kong's capture and journey to wintry New York -- How? Not in that bucket of rusty bolts! -- the movie is ready for a somewhat anti-climactic third act. The filmmakers do manage a charming interlude before the Big Guy's rendezvous with the Empire State Building; he and Ann disengage from mayhem in Manhattan for a friendly slip-slide on the ice in Central Park. Then, in the final moments atop the tower, the movie does achieve a sense of the tragedy in the huge animal's inescapable death.
Watts is such a good actress that she can scream as well as Fay Wray in the original while vesting a B-movie character with genuine integrity and truth. Brody disappears from time to time but makes an effective counterbalance to Kong for the affections of Ann, a sort of Arthur Miller-ish intellectual wooing the blond actress. Black's filmmaker is fun but too shallowly conceived, making him little more than a collection of cliches about Hollywood insincerity and callousness.
Arguably, the film's most stunning achievement is its re-creation of 1933 New York in 3-D, which allows the movie to fly anywhere in this virtual city. Meanwhile, designer Grant Major re-created a city set that reportedly occupied seven acres of the New Zealand film studio while capturing the grit and glitz of Manhattan in the Depression. Cinematographer Andrew Lesnie gives everything a soft vintage glow, as in an old postcard, while Howard's music feels as if it were lifted from a 1933 movie.
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