King Kong (2005)

The Younger Son and I got home last night not long before The Husband and The Daughter and found The Elder Son watching the 2005 Peter Jackson King Kong re-make. We finished it with him. None of us had seen it before. It's a pretty straight re-make. The Elder Son said maybe the enterprise was an audition for an Alien directorship because of all the "swarm" scenes. It stars Naomi Watts in the Fay Wray role, Jack Black as film director and expedition head Carl Denham, Adrien Brody as Jack Driscoll, Thomas Kretschmann (Immortal) as the ship's captain and Andy Serkis as Kong.

trailer:


Roger Ebert likes the way the Beauty/Beast relationship is portrayed better than the original 1933 version and calls the film "magnificent entertainment." Moria gives it top marks and says, "the crowd I saw the film with did fidget through the first hour. But when the film does finally gain its feet, Jackson dazzles us." 1000 Misspent Hours isn't so impressed, giving it 2 1/2 stars and says,

The bad news is that the new King Kong still comes nowhere near matching the original as a total package, hamstrung as it is by a lethargic pace, a marked tendency toward gross visual overindulgence, and a pointlessly hypertrophic three-hour-plus running time.

and

The good stuff is great beyond my wildest, most blatantly unrealistic hopes. The bad stuff sucks beyond my most churlish, mean-spirited worries. On the balance, it manages to be a mediocre film even though there’s next to nothing mediocre about it.