King Kong

KING KONG * * *

This new Peter Jackson film, King Kong, is a really big story. Okay, okay no more puns . . . promise, I won’t monkey around anymore. Now, you wouldn’t think there would be much need to write a review about one of the major classic films of all time (so far), but what I’ve discovered in the past few weeks is that there are any number of folks out there that haven’t experienced this story before. So here it is in a nutshell: boy meets girl; boy falls in love with girl; girl dumps boy for a dashingly gallant 25-foot Silverback Gorilla; boy leaves and joins The New Amour Propre, a men’s only self-help farm located off the coast of Greenland, where each day is spent in the planting of turnips and examining one’s self-worth.

Of course none of your time is wasted on the young man, after all who wants to see that? What we want to see is just how and why any self-respecting girl would fall for a big monkey, and we do. Giovan Straparalo wrote the original Beauty and the Beast story in the 1550’s, and ever since story-tellers have been intrigued with this format. This tale really hits home in early adolescence, when nearly every young man- pounding his testosterone filled chests, croaking and bellowing gibberish and stomping through his own danger filled jungle- is trying to figure out what’s going to make that special girl consider him . . . for even a moment . . . less animal and more man.

The true test of making it as a King Kong remake is whether or not the director can pull emotion from a crowd of skeptical spectators who may be more interested in action than love. This remake makes it and unlike the past Kong’s it has less to do with the humans and more to do with the directing and Kong himself. While Naomi Watts, as Ann Darrow, plays a stable foil for Kong’s considerable talents she’s no gorilla-my-dreams (sorry, just can’t help myself), and I have to return to the venerable Fay Ray or even Jessica Lange for the best of the Kong Girls. Adrian Brody (Jack Driscoll) is palatable though there should be laws passed against any profile shots of this man. The most notable human on-board here is Jack Black (Carl Denham) as the rascally showman who causes Kong’s eventual fall (sorry).

This is a great movie to attend while it’s at the big screen. It is a family film and keeps it that way but with lots of action moments and fun. There are some scary/creepy parts, but those will probably do more to rattle adults than kids. In the end you’ll find that this story strikes deeper than you would think; it’s more than simple science fiction or sci-fi adventure, it’s a real love story, one that has nothing to do with gender intimacy, just the connection between two living beings; one who needs protection from the dangers of a savage world, and one who needs love in a world where there is none.