King Kong - Useless Piece of (Ape) Shit

The BBQ Pit
1

Mayhap this should go in MHO, but I’m fucking hot. My son and I I just wasted $20 seeing the (new) movie King Kong. I never thought these words would pass my lips, but “Peter Jackson should burn in hell” for this stunningly boring and mind-bogglingly trite 3 hour excruciating piece of ennui.

No kidding. My boy said “That’s the longest three hours I’ve spent in my life.” and he’s only fourteen. If you’ve been snookered by Roeper and Ebert before, BEWARE! you will RUE THE DAY you spent your hard-earned on this mess. Between the crappy (first) Jurassic Park special effects and the interminable footage of people running from dinosaurs at 60 to 70 miles per hour to the NEVER ENDING soulful looks passing between beauty and the beast, to the scouting party which consists initially of 10 or so hardy souls, of whom forty or more get killed but somehow manages to end up with 10 hardy souls left over, to ceaseless automatic weapons fire a la The Terminator, to the ridiculous and off-putting mugging of Jack Black, this is one for the books. Shame on you, Jackson. This piece of shit might have filled an hour and a half, tops.

Do yourself a favor and sneak in for the last sequence at the Empire State Building - it’s the only 30 minutes I can recommend, and at that, it went on far too long. What is it with these directors and producers who think if a little is good, more is better and way too much is a tour de force? Fuck that.

Jackson has grown fat and bloated on his CG animation and forgotten he needs a story to go with the eye candy. The story of King Kong is about as exciting as farting in the bathtub, and I should have known that - especially when I goggled the 3-hour run time. I should have known better. After all, I successfully resisted seeing the same movie 30 years ago, the last time they foisted this timeless saga of love unrequited on the gullible public.

Rating: Two thumbs up. One in Ebert’s eye and the other where Roeper’s sun don’t shine.

2

Brilliant. I’m stealing that.

3

You know, having been tepidly impressed with parts of the film last week, I’ve come to realize eye candy is the perfect metaphor for these huge Hollywood productions. Just like a big ass bag of M&Ms, your intial reaction is “Mmmm, good” - followed an hour or so later with “Hmmm , I’m starting to feel lousy” - wrapping up a few days later with the question, “Eccch, why did I eat that shit?”

Is it just me, or are these dime-a-dozen ‘celebrity critics’ heaping more and more praise on the finished products that are being spewed forth? The accolades for these ‘blockbusters’ seems to be sung in near unison these past few years. I couldn’t find one negative review prior to King Kong’s Wednesday release - And I looked. I vaguely recall the same situation prior to this summer’s War of the Worlds.

If I hadn’t left my tinfoil hat at home today, I’d swear there’s either some payola finding the right targets - or a voluntary campaign by the film critics to prop up the studios that are keeping food on their tables.

4

Saw it last night and liked it. Didn’t love it, but it was not a waste of my $8.

Sorry for you.

5

I think that the scenes with Kong vs the T Rexs, & the crevass of the giant insects, were some of the most exciting (&, in the case of the insects, horrifying) examples of cinema I’ve ever seen.

True, it aint as good as the original, but what is?

6

Yah, the insects were horrifying - horrifying to watch someone being attacked while some clown stands there and shoots the fuckers off him with a .50 caliber tommy gun while he capers and the giant grasshopper eats his fucking face. Yah, I’m buying that. Puh-leeze.

I don’t care what anybody says, you cannot in good conscience tell me that film deserved to run more than 1 1/2 hours.

7

Am I the only who feels that when you are that unsatisfied with a movie, you should ask for your money back?

8

I do, especially if it’s very different from advertised. But only if you walk out before its over. Sitting through 2-3 hours and then asking for a refund is pretty weak IMO.

9

But they never guarantee satisfaction. That’s not in any of the small print. You pay to see the pretty pictures moving on the screen. If you like the pretty pictures, that’s good. If not, it’s tough shit – unless enough people don’t like 'em.

10

My main critisism was this.

He’da shaved off at LEAST a half hour, mebbe even an hour by just KNOCKING OFF THE FRIGGIN SLO-MO EVERYTIME ANYONE FELT AN EMOTION!!!

Jesus, the man is fucking obsessed with Slow motion! I thought it was bad in the Rings Trilogy, but it just gets plain stupifying in this film. Gads.

11

Why is a 3 hour remake of a remake even done? All that money and, er, talent in Hollywood, and these freakin’ space cadets can’t make a movie by themselves, you know that like, hasn’t been done before? I think it’s our duty to boycott all remakes and force those idiots to pull their fucking noses off the mirror and come up with something original!

12

Are you sure you weren’t watching Showgirls, Nickrz? :wink:

I went and saw it on Sunday. I was fairly impressed with it; while it did drag on through the middle, which was basically an excursion into seeing what could be done with CGI effects, for the most part the story kept moving forward, and the portrayal of the ape was astonishingly nuanced. And I never object to watching Naomi Watts in action, though I’d be the first to admit that this movie was scarcely a showcase for her (outstanding) acting talents; she’s mostly either a CGI rag doll or an iconic beauty in the film. I think my viewing companion was not quite so impressed with it–perhaps my minor and irregular hobby of computer animation allowed me to be somewhat more awed at the work and detail that went into the admittedly interminable and implausible chase sequences–but while it certainly could have been shortened by a fair percentage of its running length I’m at a bit of a loss with the complete dismissal and disparagement of the film. Then again, I can’t figure out how my former flatmate and his fiancee found The Fellowship of the Ring to be “the most boring movie I’ve ever seen.”

As for being described as “it aint as good as the original, but what is?”, I have to inquire as to whether the petitioner has seen the original King Kong. It’s a landmark film, of course, but it is, by any modern standard, also as hammy as they come. If you made a film of that dubious quality of acting and script today it would go straight to video purgatory. That Jackson managed to stick as closely to the original as he did while adding actual story and characterization to the film speaks to both his reverence for the material and his ability as a filmmaker.

Not a great film and certainly thin material for the acting talent applied (though I think Jack Black hit just the perfect note in this role), and time may not be as kind to the effects as audiences are forgiving to the original, but for a late-season popcorn flick it does far better than the likes of Steven Spielberg or George Lucas have managed for decades. I’m not going to drop another tenner to see it again in cinemas, nor am I going to preorder the DVD on Amazon.com, but I won’t feel like a clockwork orange if I have to viddy it at someone else house or on a flight.

But then I like cold toliet seats, so what do I know?

Stranger

13

The UA near where I used to live had a sign that said that if it was more than 20 minutes into the film you couldn’t get your money back. I assume that since there was a sign, they’d had a lot of people watching most/all of a film and asking for their money back.
I asked for my money back after about a half hour for the Steve Martin movie ‘Mixed Nuts’. It was awful.

14

I got my money back after Van Helsing, but only because I walked out. The guy said 20 minutes was their usual rule of thumb; I’d been in there for 40 minutes, but he took pity on my wretched self and gave me my money back anyway.

15

I had no desire to see King Kong before this thread, and have even less desire to see it now. At least you can be satisfied that you save ME 3 three hours.

16

Ditto that. I’m convinced. What really did it for me was hearing about the sloemotionals.

17

Yeah, a 24-foot tall ape fighting a pack of T. Rexes not far from where a troop of brontosauruses are driven to a stampede by raptors, I’ll buy. But unrealistic bullet physics? Please.

I would’ve read your entire OP but it was so long and my attention span just can’t handle anything more than 20 minutes of… hey look! Tin foil!

18

I’ve seen it twice, now. Both times, I got “action fatigue” during the brontosaurus chase. Eyes glazing over… mind wandering…

As for the rest, I can’t say a word against it. Beautiful to look at, and apart from Bronto canyon it had me engaged the whole time. I was impressed with the way they managed to alter several elements that don’t hold up well for contemporary narrative, while keeping them in their original form as parts of Denham’s movie. It made the characters watchable, but preserved the quaint charm of the 1930s characters. Deft.

I really liked the way everything was expanded on. The exposition at the beginning was watchable and filled in some blanks that wouldn’t have been necessary for 1930s theatre patrons. (“Why, naturally you can find beautiful waifs starving in the street.”)

And the music for that whole section – Al Jolson singing “Sitting on Top of the World,” was brilliant – it works on so many levels… perfect for establishing the depression era mood, with its slightly-forced optimism about being happy in the absence of money – and also doubling perfectly as a song from the imagined POV of Kong, about to fall for a girl, literally and figuratively. “Got no fancy clothes and I don’t care, I’ve only got one suit that I can wear,” and “I’m gonna phone the parson – I’m ready to call – Just like Humpty Dumpty, I’m ready to fall.”

Plenty of great action, plenty of clever metaphorical and intertextual things going on to keep the brain ticking over, and tons of pathos. Artfully crafted movie.

The brontosaurus thing didn’t work very well, true – and as far as the romance is concerned (with Driscoll, anyway) Naomi Watts doesn’t hold a candle to Faye Wray. That’s to be expected, though. Faye Wray had that hypnotic sensuality dripping off her while she just listened to Bruce Cabot read his clunky lines or looked off into the distance. How the hell did she do that? Witchcraft, maybe. :smiley:

But overall, spectacular.

19

Were we watching the same movie? 'Cause the one I saw was easily the best action movie of the year. Okay, that ain’t saying a whole hell of a lot, but I thought it was fantastic.

20

I disagree. There’s no fine print on a hamburger I buy, but if I take two bites out of it and it tastes horrible, I’m damned sure getting my money back for it. Same principal applies to movies.