Beautiful Mind

King Kong

Starring: Jack Black,Naomi Watts,Evan Parke,Adrien Brody,Andy Serkis

Director: Peter Jackson

Year: 2005

Move over Steven Spielberg, the new blockbuster-maker is here to stay. Peter Jackson's masterful retelling of King Kong is a spectacular achievement by any standard, the kind of awesomely BIG film that's incredibly hard to describe. Peter Jackson has always been an inspired filmmaker, a fact fan of his uproarious and supremely cheesy B-grade horror films will attest to. With gore classics like Bad Taste and Brain dead, it was surprising to see the filmmaker unforgettably take on the ambitions of adapting J R R Tolkien's masterpiece.

King Kong is an old story first told in movie form in 1933, so if I spoil any plot points you'll have to forgive the fact that the script is 72 years old. Risk-taking director Carl Denham takes an American crew from the relatively safe streets of the US to the uncharted Skull Island, a land that time and evolution have forgotten. Inhabited by giant dinosaur-like creatures -- Jackson calls the T-Rex a "V-Rex" -- and ruled by a giant and wildly powerful gorilla , Skull Island is where the crew crash lands and must explore to escape. Denham (played by the spirited Jack Black), Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), Hayes (Evan Parke), and Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) all play a large part in the movie. Andy Serkis (Gollum from Lord Of The Rings) who also plays Lumpy, a one-eyed cook in the film, grunts emphatically enough to make King Kong breathe, giving him soul. From anger to indignation, surprise to ecstasy, we are soon empathizing, totally bowled over by the mammoth monkey. A scene on a frozen lake is indescribably beautiful, and pure movie magic.

Despite the shortness and a handful of scripting errors, Peter Jackson's King Kong is in many ways a huge step forward in level design and presentation, it's beautiful and, most importantly, it's fun.

Rate: 9/10

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