We just got back from watching King Kong tonight, so here’s my review.
All in all, I think that this movie easily takes the top honors for best monster movie. The combination of the special effects and Peter Jackson’s direction have bumped up the bar several notches and it will probably be hard to top.
Since Dan already talked about this in his review, I don’t feel it’s giving too much away to let you know that there are dinosaurs and all kinds of other menacing creatures in this movie, in order to deliver what a monster movie should at it’s core: powerful slugfests between huge (and in this case, realistic looking) monsters. For the King Kong vs. Godzilla fan, there is certainly more than enough of that kind of action here - way more than any movie before it.
If it sounds like I’m talking about the monster fighting scenes a lot, it’s only because I can’t overemphasize how much of it there was. If anything, this is my only criticism of the movie - it was just too long. Granted, we went to the 10:10 show, so we didn’t get out until after 1am, but it’s a heck of a long movie, and I did feel that some parts were kind of stretched unnecessarily. At some points when the fight / suspense scenes kept going and going and going …. I kind of felt like saying “OK, we get that you’re breaking new ground in the monster movie genre, let’s move on”.
That being said, for anyone who’s into that kind of thing (especially fans of the original, old school monster movies) this will not disappoint, and they’ll probably enjoy the length of it, since you’ll get plenty of what you come for. As for the story itself, it didn’t impress me quite as much as it did Dan, but it’s at least as good (or better) than the original, from what I remember of it.
It’s definitely not a movie for kids, though - at least not mine. There are a lot of parts (almost the whole movie after they get to the island) where kids would probably be peeing their pants and/or crying and having nightmares for weeks afterwards.
One final note - and I think this is pretty important - this is definitely an in-theater movie experience; there is absolutely no way that a DVD and anything less that a very expensive sound system can reproduce this film properly, and I actually think that the DVD sales may suffer because of that.
5 Comments
It was long in every way. There were scenes of people staring at each other for looooonnnggg times and it was quite annoying. Do they think we are stupid? We get the point. I wouldn’t ever choose a movie like this, but thanks Greg for the fun night out!
Definitely but it’s a whole lot better when you don’t go to such a late show. 830 was perfect and I didn’t want to rush any of it. Except the character stuff on the boat but. like I said, is necessary for you to feel for the character.
i’m so back and forth on this. looks like a real love it or hate it movie…
You would hate it if you were a girl.
It’s the kind of movie most people probably won’t like, I would guess.
If you’re a fan of the original (in terms of the story - since that’s pretty much all the original has to offer), you will certainly like this one as Jackson does a great job of retelling it; but what else could you expect from a great director?
If you’re a fan of CG stuff, this one is definitely worthwhile. Unlike a lot of sci-fi tech CG movies, this one I think is impressive because it makes things look realistic (at least as realistic as these kinds of things can), with a couple exceptions.
If you aren’t really interested in either of those two aspects, you may not be too impressed, although I don’t think many will actually hate it (unless you don’t like bugs/monsters/scary people). And as I mentioned before, I still think it was a tad too long in terms of most audiences attention span, but so were all the LOTR movies and those were good too, so it’s not necessarily a disqualification.