Of cabbages and kings...
Mood:
curious
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I liked King Kong.
I liked it much in the same way I enjoy any deeply flawed films that have some diversion to offer.
Independance Day is a great film to put on while your doing something else, and just watch the explosions. It's a terrible film, but the explosions are fun.
Kong doesn't plumb ID4 depths, but I've never seen a project so close to sinking under it's own genius. It's like it wanted to be a bad film.
Peter Jackson's horror films were fun, and LOTR was wonderful. But I have to wonder if he's heading down the George Lucas route where no one can tell him if something is a bad idea.
When you make an over 3 hour film, I think everything needs to be perfect in it, and each scene needs to build on the story in an important way. There were plenty of scenes in Kong that didn't do anything except show off effects, some of which were really shaky.
It was like a B movie turned up to 11. When it was good, it was great. The casting was good, and I loved the performances. Jack Black was perfect as a huckster movie director with no conscence. I could watch Naomi Watts read the phonebook all day, and I think she brought the right amount of strength to the character, and you could really believe why she felt sorry for Kong and wanted to protect him.
But like my trying to fit into my kindergarten pajamas, it was too much questionable material stuffed into a film that didn't warrent it.
It wasn't enough to have a fight with Kong, but you had to add multiple combatants, and have it here, and there, and another place, dragging on like a WWF match with about the same amount of theatricality.
And the people couldn't be attacked by Kong, but by dinosaurs, and bugs, and not just bugs but 50 different types of bugs. I don't care if it was cut from the original film, it was the kind of filmmaking excess that would have been blasted in any other director by critics, but Jackson is still in his free pass stage from LOTR where he's a darling even if the film is pretty over-rated.
New York of the 30s looked wonderful, and there was definately a hour and a half of a really good film in there. Something definately worth watching.
It's just too bad no one could corral the director into getting to that good film in the midst of 3 hours.
I shudder to think what the directors cut is going to run at.
I liked it much in the same way I enjoy any deeply flawed films that have some diversion to offer.
Independance Day is a great film to put on while your doing something else, and just watch the explosions. It's a terrible film, but the explosions are fun.
Kong doesn't plumb ID4 depths, but I've never seen a project so close to sinking under it's own genius. It's like it wanted to be a bad film.
Peter Jackson's horror films were fun, and LOTR was wonderful. But I have to wonder if he's heading down the George Lucas route where no one can tell him if something is a bad idea.
When you make an over 3 hour film, I think everything needs to be perfect in it, and each scene needs to build on the story in an important way. There were plenty of scenes in Kong that didn't do anything except show off effects, some of which were really shaky.
It was like a B movie turned up to 11. When it was good, it was great. The casting was good, and I loved the performances. Jack Black was perfect as a huckster movie director with no conscence. I could watch Naomi Watts read the phonebook all day, and I think she brought the right amount of strength to the character, and you could really believe why she felt sorry for Kong and wanted to protect him.
But like my trying to fit into my kindergarten pajamas, it was too much questionable material stuffed into a film that didn't warrent it.
It wasn't enough to have a fight with Kong, but you had to add multiple combatants, and have it here, and there, and another place, dragging on like a WWF match with about the same amount of theatricality.
And the people couldn't be attacked by Kong, but by dinosaurs, and bugs, and not just bugs but 50 different types of bugs. I don't care if it was cut from the original film, it was the kind of filmmaking excess that would have been blasted in any other director by critics, but Jackson is still in his free pass stage from LOTR where he's a darling even if the film is pretty over-rated.
New York of the 30s looked wonderful, and there was definately a hour and a half of a really good film in there. Something definately worth watching.
It's just too bad no one could corral the director into getting to that good film in the midst of 3 hours.
I shudder to think what the directors cut is going to run at.
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