NEW REVIEW!! KING KONG! So about midway through the mind-numbing first hour of this movie I thought to myself "I really could've just rented Raiders of the Lost Ark." When the guy was being eaten by the penis with teeth, I thought to myself "You know, I've never seen Alien all the way through." When the hero and the heroine (who, if you're just joining us from under a rock somewhere, are a huge gorilla and a movie starlet respectively) were looking into each other's eyes longingly, I thought "Titanic, really wasn't that bad if you think about it. Maybe it was the media hype that turned me off. I should rent it again."

Point being... Peter Jackson's King Kong remake is not bad. It's just so not even in the same eschlon as the five films its trying to simultaneously be. Some of its defenders have said to me that its just a fun action movie. If this is a fun action movie, I am gravely concerned for the future of American film. I didn't have any fun at all.

REASONS WHY ARDEN DIDN'T HAVE FUN: Reason number one being that there was no main character, no hero. Hey! I hear you out there! If Kong is the main character, why did we spend an hour NOT LOOKING AT HIM? Reason number two being that the score was AWFUL. Good action films should have scores that shepard you through all the sequences. You can watch Star Wars with your eyes closed for Chrissakes. Instead we get some kind of whiny, faux-Max Steiner bullshit. The spider pit sequence was practically in silence. Reason number three being that the gear shifts between genres (adventure/sci-fi/love story) which can be broken down into the three seperate hours of my life that this film occupied are completely unjustifiable. Holy God! It's A REMAKE. JUST REMAKE WHAT THE OTHER PEOPLE DID. Don't remake it into three different movies! Reason number four being that this film is manipulative. Not in a good way. Not in the subtle way that all good films are. But this film is outright: BE SCARED. CRY NOW. BE ANGRY. FEEL GUILTY. I rarely get to experience anything as cinematically irresponsible as the way Jackson pulls at your emotions in his (let's be honest) really flipping weird quest to make you believe this woman and this ape had a relationship.

Ok. Out of all the things. All the themes and socio-anthropological ramfications of the story of King Kong, Peter Jackson chooses the quote-unquote love story? Okay. Everyone who liked the film. Just bear with me for a second. King Kong is about a huge black gorilla who shows no mercy against interlopers and kidnappers and who wishes to possess a captive blond female not unlike we would posess a bunny rabbit.

And it's a love story...? This is all such racy stuff. It's dangerous material that was attacked with gusto by the original filmmakers with fly-by-night B-movie filmmaking. Here, Jackson almost respects it too much treating it like a senior thesis project rather than a fantasy film. This kind of precise and obsessive filmmaking served him well while navigating through Tolkein's universe but the creators of King Kong probably put about as much thought into their myth as Tolkein did into just what a Hobbit's eating habits consisted of. Basically if the Lord of the Rings trilogy is The Mahabharata then King Kong is the Judo-Christian creation myth. Simple but fraught with symbolism. With that kind of material, let it be. Let it speak for itself. Don't send it to the laboratory, do tests on it, and then release it into the wild. You can't domesticate something that isn't yours to begin with. This is probably the obvious and most crucial lesson of the original King Kong that Jackson (despite all his worshipfulness) somehow missed.

Bottom line: Great special effects. Too long. Say what you will but my kids are watching the original.