Review:

King Kong.... hail to the King, baby. Is it Movie of the year? Read on....

My reactions? I'm beguiled. Blown away. Stupefyed, even. King Kong is simply scintillating in every aspect possible, while retaining the brilliance of the novelty crammed 1933 smash hit. The movie was casted to utmost PERFECTION (those who are skeptical when it comes to Jack Black, well, don't worry, and even Andy Serkis make more than just cameo appearances!), no one could have executed this better than Peter Jackson. Period. It's revolting enough that this film didn't sweep the Oscars or Golden Globe Awards, let alone wasn't nominated to a satisfactory level. Yawn.

Anyway, from beginning to end, King Kong is an adventure that certainly is not to be missed. Sure it starts needing to get up to its eyes, but that's because it's establishing something called the vibe of the movie..... the characters, you know, character development? Some open spaces for humour that far exceeds the pathetic attempts stabbed by the LOTR trilogy, even if some parts of the film are intentionally humourous, while not quite funny IMO.

I think the movie opened brilliantly, with the zoo, the depression, and Ann Moss..... I was doubtful, but she just nailed down the part. As did that movie producer guy. Once they hop on that boat and begin their journey, the movie trudges in a whole different direction. A broodier direction, as not 100% stern the movie staves itself to be, it's actually a very ominious and frightening tale of courage, epic proportions, apprehension. Another thing is that the movie just FEELS so realistic - so gritty - and has that attribute that was also very apparent in the LOTR trilogy - it's the perfect collaboration of emotion, action, CGI digital special effects, superb acting, themes and deeper meanings, and a whole lot more, all coupled into a 3+ hour film narrative. Infact, the movie flew by so quickly that it felt more like a 2 hour movie to me. There's just so many sheerly intense, yet narly moments that are both full of chuckles and poignant shifts, many of them actually parallels to the LOTR trilogy, namely those large arachnid predators, that to Shelob, but that's just Peter Jackson being himself, 80s style grotesque stuff, y'know?

Oh, and did I mention that the relationship between King Kong and Ann is nothing short of extraordinary? Peter Jackson certainly knows how to convey on screen now naïve, yet heartfelt monstirous creature is really, no differentiated than humanity, and the fact that humanity simply refuses to inure that other life is much closer to us than we consider in our minds. The nigher the end of the movie comes, the more you realize that it's [i]man[/i] and their synthetic weapons of destruction that's the real monster here, not harmless (in a sense, at essence) savages and species, and the like. That's the thing though - the movie actually has a [i]heart[/i] - a [u]soul[/u], something that is sorely lacking in most CGI boasting movies these days.

Hmm, onto the CGI digital effects. They blended it in, in a compositing sense, a lot better than they did in the trailers, probably because the Super 35mm 2:35:1 transfer was less clear, with what's probably going to be a cleaned up transfer in terms of colour rendition, MPEG-2 compression and artifacts/postersation, black/green/other colour levels, edge enhancement, and etcetra. So they weren't as cutted and pasted as I originally anticipated, and this is even more mutually beneficial and fulfilling considering the fact that CGI is integral in this movie.

Is the CGI digital model of King Kong the breakthrough that it's been raved to be? In my opinion, no, although it's a fine digital actor that reaches a level of emotion that you can actually [i]feel[/i] and relate to, and as the physical presence of a live, actually [i]existing[/i] entity and a digital entity detection can be discriminated due to the sensitivity of the human eye, I'd say it's still quite easy to tell that it's CGI. The raytraced reflections in his eyes, yet the eyes alone, were done very well though, even if it's really not as groundbreaking as the Gollumn model from LOTR, or the Yoda/Grevious model from ROTS, or Harry Potter's, err, little revolutionary creature in his digital model glory that I can't remember the surname of, not that I really am all that enthralled by Harry Potter anyway. Sorry to stray off-topic there. Anyway, yes, the effects are more than just decent.

Speaking of the effects, it's minature speaketh time! Peter Jackson and his Wingnut/WETA digital team certainly managed to keep their flair for awesome loads of humongous, stupendous minatures, they're all over the place (in a great way, that is), on Skull Island, the ship, and so on and so forth. On from the effects, I held high hopes for the musical score to succeed as well as it would had Peter Jackson accepted Howard Shore's probably incredible effort. However, James Newton Howard still did an excellent job. I look foward to picking the score up, sooner than later, too.

That being said, I think that pretty much rounds up my review. King Kong is a masterpiece, folks - a fantastic film that won't, in all likelyhood, disappoint. It's definitely Movie of the Year, at least in my opinion, and quite easily rivals LOTR, not that it's really in a position to, and that both movies are quite a deviation from eachother, even if they [i]do[/i] have a similiar feel due to being crafted by the same people. I walked into the theatre with nearly impossible expectations that I didn't assume to be met - yet I was gobsmacked, regardless. And yes, when I say Movie of the Year, I mean better than Batman Begins, which was a fabulous flick. So do yourself a favor, and go see it. ASAP. The critics aren't mendacizing. Nor are the biased boneheads on IMDB. You won't regret it.

Overall Verdict:

Pros - Great acting, nifty story, beyond adequate effects, magnificently thrilling moments, and an ultimately poignant adventure, and ultra-lengthy enough (3 hours and 7 minutes!!!) to fill my tastes!

Cons - Sometimes not funny when attempted to be, CGI could be integrated a bit better, and a bit more elaborate. And ummmm.... ummm, yeah, I'll get back to you on the rest of the cons some other time.

Score: [b]9.4/10.0[/b]