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King Kong (2005)

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Yes! We Have No Bananas!, 27 December 2005

Author: dunmore_ego from Los Angeles, California

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Pure entertainment. Twenty-five hairy-bottomed, big-dumb-galoot feet of it. And nothing else. Despite the ubiquitous refrain of beauty and beast subtexts and alienation metaphors and caveats against taming nature, searching for deeper meaning within this wholly implausible tale will only lead to senseless cavil and being considered the big ponce for taking it so seriously in the first place.

If there is any message we can glean from this fanciful ape tale, haunting our sensibilities since before there was rock and roll, it is that Women Will Kill You – One Way Or Another. But we already knew that.

Director Peter Jackson actually fixed what wasn't broke! Comparison with Merian C. Cooper's and Ernest B. Schoedsack's 1933 *King Kong* is not only inevitable – it should be compulsory, to fully appreciate Jackson's phenomenal achievement.

As dambusting and magical as the 1933 original was, it reads now as riotously unsophisticated and virtually unwatchable, with its token white-supremacist racism, its sophomoric "love affair" between Darrow and Driscoll; and – most heinously – the primitive, community theater acting styles of all the principals. I challenge anyone to re-watch their deteriorating VHS copy of that plasticine ape movie without laughing or cringing.

In 2005, our newest incarnation of Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) is a vaudeville performer so down on her luck in Depression-era New York that she has reached the stage of, "To get work in this town, which Big Ape do I have to screw?" As luck would have it, director Carl Denham (Jack Black, in a role which will rocketsauce his career), "discovers" her in a sequence which not only pays homage to the original film, but which supplies Darrow with suitable backstory and motivation enough to voyage with Denham into the unknown.

To an island merely a scrawl on a sea-dog's map, Denham's hired tramp steamer runs aground. The island natives are more than restless; face-pierced, alien and lethal, they kidnap Darrow as sacrifice to their simian god – Kong.

Director Jackson and co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens have added all the bells and whistles which the original film strived for and alluded to, but did not quite achieve. *King Kong* 2005 has not only improved on its progenitor's technical icing one-hundredfold (which goes without saying, and which is NOT the reason this film is better than the original), it also boasts character development, motivation, Method acting, and actually possesses the "love story" foretold, but never realized, in that far, far away galaxy of 1933.

Once upon Skull Island, the movie ratchets into the stratosphere, in sequences where we realize that, due to his pedigree, Jackson is the only person who could have remade *King Kong* with any semblance of majestic authenticity. In fact, the whole Skull Island interlude is so rife with arterially-bursting CGI that "breathtaking" or "awe-inspiring" are not only understatements, they are sins against humanity.

Peter Jackson is George Lucas with a soul, giving us "More is More" without losing sight of the human protagonists at the heart of his tale. For example, at the tyrannosaur attack of 1933, Kong had not yet displayed any particular proclivity towards his captive, except for ferrying her about like the spoiled brat she was. Why then, did he risk his life battling a t-rex for her? By 2005's t-rex battle, Kong has at least invested some emotion in Darrow (albeit as an intriguing and amusing plaything), thereby justifying some smidgen of motivation to risk his life for her. (Still, it's a stretch that anyone would go the distance with *three tyrannosaurs* over a pet hamster.) Darrow realizes that her only card is to ally herself with the King of this jungle, so for the first time in any Kong movie, a palpable connection is made between her and the ape. Wray never found any pity for the beast at all, opting to scream like a loon anytime it was near.

Kong's and Darrow's attachment is so pronounced that by the time Driscoll appears to "save" her, it actually seems implausible that she would desert her ape captor, as her human savior seems oh-so-impotent compared to the masculinity of the beast; the first *Kong* movie where this doubt even crosses our minds, all other heroines tripping over their diaphanous gowns rushing into the arms of their man-heroes.

Now if only we could ignore the fact that Kong's grasp should realistically crush over half her bones, or that her neck should have snapped a long time ago with him manhandling her like a doll, we'd be in that delusional pink that the original's supporters seemingly wallow in.

In the movie's only weak sequence, Kong is captured by Denham and the boat crew (- after battling three tyrannosaurs? *I don't think so!*).

By the time Kong climbs the Empire State Building, with Darrow in tow, Jackson has stacked his deck with the message that the original film found so hard to convey – that Kong is not the most dangerous beast - *humans* are.

The Arabian proverb that opened the 1933 film is now hardly applicable to that flawed masterpiece, after witnessing the depth of emotion that infuses 2005's heart-breaking skyscraper flourish: "And lo, the Beast looked upon the face of beauty. And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead." As Darrow sorrowfully watches a final sunrise with her wild and crazy pal, she repeats once more, "Beautiful!", now referring not only to the pastel-palette horizon, but also to Kong, as a part of that natural world – inevitably cut down by a "civilized" world which could find no place for twenty-five hairy-bottomed, big-dumb-galoot feet of nature within its concrete heart.

(For this unabridged review, visit: www.poffysmoviemania.com/KingKong2005.html)

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