Movie Review: KING KONG (2005)

Directed by Peter Jackson
Screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson
Story by Merian C. Cooper, Edgar Wallace
Starring Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody

This was our family holiday movie. we all watched it together after dinner on christmas day, at oakridge cinema.

kw reads this movie as a comparison between man and beast--they're smelly, furry, bad communicators, and they grunt. She's completely swept away by Adrian Brody. Who wouldn't be? His character is a writer, his lines ought to be polished.

kh is annoyed by it's cultural undertones. Must the savage always be black? Could it be that far of a stretch for the imagination if the ape had white fur? Seriously, an ape that is 25 feet tall!! Certainly, the film has satisfied it's multicultural requirement, with the one East Asian extra, but i'd rather, it hadn't. I'd rather East Asians had no roles, if they were relegated to short, stubby, thickly accented, ugly, rude, and end up dead characters. It's not that there weren't ugly rude dead white characters, but there are handsome sensitive gentle ones to balance off of. East Asian stereotypes are not deeply engrained because of their vaccuumous lack in mainstream media. But entering mainstream in these shackles, is... just... really... sad. Why can't Anne Darrow be Anne Chan or Anne Wong--beautiful, fragile, abandoned and struggling to survive the Depression? That also really bothered me, how white and blond our protagonist is. That should be noticed, not overlooked.

okay, racial contention aside, let's talk about gender politics. The film paints a sleazy picture for men. Woman continues to be the battlefield, the bargaining chip, the trophy to be won, between contending men, who are Carl Denham the filmmaker (played by Jack Black) and King Kong the savage. The savage beast, who does die for losing the final battle, is portrayed more humanely and as inspired by love. Carl Denham gets the last line, "Beauty killed the Beast," demonstrating his irresponsibility to everything and all--like the original man who said, "She gave me the apple. It was her." For clearly, it was not Beauty who killed the Beast (nor woman who forcefed man), but men who took the ape from his natural habitat and shot him down with aeroplanes off the Empire State Building. Finally, Beauty runs into the loving embrace of Jack Driscoll (played by Adrien Brody) the effeminate writer, and the only genuine male character of the movie.

kh enjoyed the intro of the movie, which is a very beautifully crafted period design of architecture, furniture, fashion, cars. Gorgeous. The speaking lines are not cheesy, except for the last one, which i think could be perhaps better delivered--awkward, neverthelss.

k1 doesn't like movies with dinosaurs. wtf?

kg is also annoyed by it's cultural implications. We agree that there should be a movie of Chinese explorers, way back when the Chinese explored, who, with great difficulty, cross the Arctic North and ends up in Northern Europe to encounter the savage Vikings, with their red faces covered in fur, i mean hair, and smelling of shit and alcohol, speaking in a gibberish language, living in caves. There will be one white boy on board with the heroic explorers, who upon encountering the Vikings, begin to ask, "who am i?" but forget not that he's just a minor character who gets devoured by the vikings in the end.

kg also was very annoyed by King Kong's biological inaccuracies. Big dinosaurs run v... e... r... y... slowly. And why would a T-rex prey on a small human girl, when it already has a dinosaur limb in its mouth? Insects don't grow that big!!

mom kept wondering when King Kong comes into the film. Did she enter the right theatre?

dad grunted.