King Kong Phooey
Peter Jackson's new King Kong movie is so good in so many ways that's almost a shame I have to trash it.
But first, the good: The "love" story between Kong and the sexy blonde -- current iteration, Naomi Watts -- is believable, compelling and even touching. Watts is good, Kong is great. Anybody who saw the incredibly life-like computer-generated Gollum in Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy (which, based on those movies' gross box office, is, roughly, everybody) won't be surprised that the pixilated primate is bursting with personality. The movie is three-hour adventure thrill ride that definitely gives you your $10.75 worth. Hell, the scene where, after rescuing the damsel from the extreme distress of being eaten by ravenous Skull Island T-Rexes, Kong sulks, feigning aloofness like spurned lover or a willful child (i.e. "I didn't want to play with you anyway, so there!") is worth $10.75 all by itself.
(Economic digression -- Why, in the US, do all movies at the same theater cost the same amount of money to see, regardless of what they cost to make and of what price they might command on the free market? Regardless, in other words, of their value? It's like charging the same price for every car on a given lot. In this, as in so much else, the Chinese, who charge more to see popular movies than they do to see duds, are far more capitalist than we are. [I'm not saying this is a good thing -- China would be a more pleasant place if it adopted some old-fashioned US socialism, such as free public education and a social safety net. This, though, is far beyond DC's meager bailiwick. If such things interest you, I suggest you find a Dilettante Economist of some sort.])
So, sure, it's got its good points. It's just that the problems are so problematical. Jack Black, a revelation in High Fidelity, an inspiration in Tenacious D, and a legit box office-delivering comedy superhero in School of Rock, practically ruins the movie all by himself with the kind of cringe-inducing performance that makes you fear for his career. It's a tedious, one-note performance with none of the impish anarchy you expect from the guy. He delivers the remake's famous closing line as though he were profoundly embarrassed to be there. (Back in the day, when I was a cocky young actor of dubious integrity [and with about a tenth of Black's natural talent], I was often embarrassed to be in the drek that paid my bills, and I no doubt occasionally allowed that to color my own work. All I can say in my defense is -- well... There's not really anything, is there? I have no defense. I should have done better. My bad.) Anyway, I haven't read any reviews of this movie -- which is kind of odd, because I enjoy reading reviews -- so I don't know what the real critics are saying. But if anybody glosses over the gifted Black's decision to phone this one in from far, far away, he's either not paying attention, kissing Jackson's ass or on the take from Universal. Or something.
An even bigger problem, though, is Jackson's relentlessness with those same special effects I was just praising. Which is so weird, since the studio (I've read) fought with him to make the movie shorter and cheaper, which he could so easily have done by leaving out a ten-minute brontasaurus stampede (I'm not kidding. OK, maybe it was five minutes.) of jaw-dropping irrelevance and stupidity. And what possible reason could he have for throwing in all those velociraptors -- a dinosaur that maybe thirteen people in the world had heard of before Jurassic Park --- other than to show that he could do them better than Spielberg? (Which, since the damn things at least had a point in Spielberg's bad dinosaur movie and they have none here, he totally fails to do.) There are so many of these high-octane showy scenes in a row that even the good ones lose the power they would otherwise have. At one point, when giant bugs threaten to eat Adrian Brody (which wound up being a great scene, by the way, even though Brody didn't get eaten), a guy sitting near me perfectly summed up the feelings of many in the audience when he said, "Oh, no, not again!"
Things that should be very good but that, for some stupid and obvious reason aren't, make me so much more upset than things that are just bad. Maybe I should work on that. But I probably won't.
But first, the good: The "love" story between Kong and the sexy blonde -- current iteration, Naomi Watts -- is believable, compelling and even touching. Watts is good, Kong is great. Anybody who saw the incredibly life-like computer-generated Gollum in Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy (which, based on those movies' gross box office, is, roughly, everybody) won't be surprised that the pixilated primate is bursting with personality. The movie is three-hour adventure thrill ride that definitely gives you your $10.75 worth. Hell, the scene where, after rescuing the damsel from the extreme distress of being eaten by ravenous Skull Island T-Rexes, Kong sulks, feigning aloofness like spurned lover or a willful child (i.e. "I didn't want to play with you anyway, so there!") is worth $10.75 all by itself.
(Economic digression -- Why, in the US, do all movies at the same theater cost the same amount of money to see, regardless of what they cost to make and of what price they might command on the free market? Regardless, in other words, of their value? It's like charging the same price for every car on a given lot. In this, as in so much else, the Chinese, who charge more to see popular movies than they do to see duds, are far more capitalist than we are. [I'm not saying this is a good thing -- China would be a more pleasant place if it adopted some old-fashioned US socialism, such as free public education and a social safety net. This, though, is far beyond DC's meager bailiwick. If such things interest you, I suggest you find a Dilettante Economist of some sort.])
So, sure, it's got its good points. It's just that the problems are so problematical. Jack Black, a revelation in High Fidelity, an inspiration in Tenacious D, and a legit box office-delivering comedy superhero in School of Rock, practically ruins the movie all by himself with the kind of cringe-inducing performance that makes you fear for his career. It's a tedious, one-note performance with none of the impish anarchy you expect from the guy. He delivers the remake's famous closing line as though he were profoundly embarrassed to be there. (Back in the day, when I was a cocky young actor of dubious integrity [and with about a tenth of Black's natural talent], I was often embarrassed to be in the drek that paid my bills, and I no doubt occasionally allowed that to color my own work. All I can say in my defense is -- well... There's not really anything, is there? I have no defense. I should have done better. My bad.) Anyway, I haven't read any reviews of this movie -- which is kind of odd, because I enjoy reading reviews -- so I don't know what the real critics are saying. But if anybody glosses over the gifted Black's decision to phone this one in from far, far away, he's either not paying attention, kissing Jackson's ass or on the take from Universal. Or something.
An even bigger problem, though, is Jackson's relentlessness with those same special effects I was just praising. Which is so weird, since the studio (I've read) fought with him to make the movie shorter and cheaper, which he could so easily have done by leaving out a ten-minute brontasaurus stampede (I'm not kidding. OK, maybe it was five minutes.) of jaw-dropping irrelevance and stupidity. And what possible reason could he have for throwing in all those velociraptors -- a dinosaur that maybe thirteen people in the world had heard of before Jurassic Park --- other than to show that he could do them better than Spielberg? (Which, since the damn things at least had a point in Spielberg's bad dinosaur movie and they have none here, he totally fails to do.) There are so many of these high-octane showy scenes in a row that even the good ones lose the power they would otherwise have. At one point, when giant bugs threaten to eat Adrian Brody (which wound up being a great scene, by the way, even though Brody didn't get eaten), a guy sitting near me perfectly summed up the feelings of many in the audience when he said, "Oh, no, not again!"
Things that should be very good but that, for some stupid and obvious reason aren't, make me so much more upset than things that are just bad. Maybe I should work on that. But I probably won't.
posted by DC at 11:33 AM
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