Now that it’s out on DVD, I finally got to see Peter Jackson’s big remake of King Kong. Unsurprisingly, I found it disappointing.
I’ve got nothing against P.J., though I’m not one of his worshippers either. "Heavenly Creatures" is my favorite Jackson flick, and his early splatter-gore films are fun. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was impressive in its scope. It didn’t thrill me, but that’s more to do with Tolkien than Jackson.
I was skeptical of the Kong remake from the get-go. Jackson’s enthusiasm for the original is wonderful, but frankly, I just didn’t see the need for a big-budget, CGI-heavy remake. After watching it, I still don’t.
The CGI is impressive, as far as it goes, and the brontosaurus stampede is cool. But the more "realistic" monsters of this version have none of the magic and warmth of Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion creations. It feels like warmed-over Jurassic Park – and Jurassic Park came out a loooong time ago, folks. Kong’s emotions, which are so pivotal to the success of the film, are much less convincing here than on the old clay, wood and hair model.
Equally unimpressive is Jack Black. This guy was seemingly born to play Carl Denham, but he doesn’t pull it off – his performance is too flat in some scenes (like Kong’s Broadway unveiling) and too broad in others. (Black/Denham gets the last word in the film, of course, and it’s greatly annoying: "Twas beauty killed the beast." The line, ironic and iconic in 1933, is grating here. I couldn’t resist the impulse to shout, "No asshole, you killed him!")
Adrian Brody is less annoying than usual. Mostly he’s just there.
One area where Jackson could have seriously improved on the original was in addressing the racism of Denham’s expedition toward the inhabitants of Skull Island. Instead it was left untouched. The "natives" are portrayed as inhuman savages and – as in the original – they appear Black, even though they live in the South Seas. Jackson’s only sop to civil rights is to make the ship’s first mate an African American. He is stereotypically wise and worldly, but has nothing to say or do about his shipmates’ colonialist outlook.
So what’s good here? Jackson’s film makes explicit the love affair between Kong and Anne Darrow – a romance that was decidedly one-sided in the original. And herein lies the only reason to watch this film unless you’re a CGI junkie: the stellar performance of Naomi Watts.
Watts saves the movie. This is remarkable when you consider that she has little to do but scream much of the time. But when she gets her moments, she makes the most of them, brining real emotion to her scenes with the CGI Kong.
Watts’ Anne Darrow is understandably scared and confused when she’s picked up and carried away by the giant primate. But once Kong goes toe-to-toe with the dinosaurs to protect her, she makes her choice in favor of him, and never wavers. No one has ever defended this impoverished and out-of-work vaudevillian before, certainly not the "civilized" men who urge her to get work at a strip club or who come to "rescue" her like a prized possession.
The power of Watts’ performance is to communicate this feeling throughout the later part of the film. Even when Brody comes to rescue her from Kong’s mountain perch, it’s painfully obvious that she’s only going with him out of a feeling of guilt over his efforts to reach her. She would rather live out the rest of her short life beside her new and true friend.
The only sour note in Watts' performance comes at the very end, after Kong topples from the Empire State Building, when she embraces Brody (who apparently has gone back to his old life and had nothing to do with her since their return to New York).
I would have just pushed him off.