An outright commercial. Fantasy flick. Overtly sentimental. Glitches here and there. Popcorn muncher’s special. Graphics Galore.
Yet its an accomplishment in modern cinema. Its bigger than what you have seen before. While it pays tributes to many classics, its tries to get better than all of them. It slightly succeeds too. If you are a sane person you wouldn’t attempt to make a movie like that. One would assume it was Matrix or Charlie Kaufman flicks which were unconceivable. Even after conceiving, bringing them on-screen would be a tight rope walk. But King Kong is very much conceivable but the script to screen conversion is where Peter Jackson displays his genius in movie making. If Lord Of The Rings was anything by grandeur, King Kong is an epitome of this show business. With this PJ proves he is one among the top showmen in Hollywood.
Oh !! yeah, its the same story. The beauty and the beast. The same moving fantasy tale that we have witnessed before more than once on-screen. But there’s not one beast here but an array of them. While the gorilla falls in love with blond babe, the other spooky creatures try to eat the beauty, flesh and blood. Its like making Mahabharata or Bible, as a film. The whole world knows the story. So what are you going to do different about it ? Peter answers that with an utmost ease. Even succumbing to have a very ‘believable’ ending, PJ still works his crazy ways of getting there, to the climax. With a three hour movie you could pretty much bore the fans with all the build-up. PJ does take his own sweet time in unleashing the beast but doesn’t allow you to sink in the seat, even until then. Howabout having King Kong + Titanic + Jurassic Park + all the what-if-you-get-lost-in-a-creepy-forest movies in one movie. Its a sheer tact to combine the best of all these and pack them into one movie.
The beauty and the beast are so well attached to each other. Just like the previous Kong flicks, you would fall in love with the Kong even at the very minute you meet him. At the end, it does compel you to shed a single tear. Though it might be laughable to watch the inter-species romance, this is how the original was made. Kong loves the Ann Darrow, a suffering actress. Ann just sympathizes Kong for that. But no where as I feared, Naomi shouts,” Kong…Kill them”. And thats a big relief.
An effort of re-creating this classic is an herculean task. There are hundreds of infinitesimal details that needs to be taken care. Without a worthy team, PJ wouldn’t have succeeded in creating this to-be-classic. Yes, PJ’s King Kong is the most complete movie in the Kong series and its an instant classic. A perfect cast which includes, Naomi Watts – the babe from Mulholland Dr., Adrien Brody – with a nose of namooru Vikram and the superb Jack Black. I would crime if you missed to mention, Andy Serkis as the man behind the CG Gorilla. You just can’t ask for more in the casting department.
Re-creating the depression-era New York mustn’t have been hard with computer graphics. But the production values are just mind-blowing. The skull-island and those wacky creatures seem horribly true. King Kong by himself seems completely alive. Be it the way he jumps thunderously to catch the blond girl or the way he sneaks through the streets of New York after finding her. while the most brilliant sequences being the above, there are also masterfully picturised stunts between the Gorilla and T-Rexes. You wouldn’t be skeptical, that Kong is a computer generated creature. However there are places where the cast caught in between graphics, seem unreal. An amazing support from the music director for those splendid BGMs.
It takes nearly 100 minutes for the Kong to enter the story but the entry is with a build-up much bigger than a Super Star entry. From then on until the end its pure action, every shot. At times it gets so high that you just wish, PJ would give a few minutes of break for the action.
As Peter Jackson says, its his childhood dream to make King Kong. But none including him would have believed that it would turn so spectacular. The whole three hour movie seems to be a big dipper of fun, romance, action and fantasy.
A must see, ofcourse in the theatre. Don’t even dare to watch in on the DVD. Forget your logic and critic hats at home. PJ’s King Kong like Spielberg’s ET is one of those reasons, why movies exist.
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