I Wanna Walk Like You

Just got out of King Kong, a movie about a behemoth who takes over an entire city and wins a pretty girl's heart despite his monstrous features and animal-like feeding frenzies.

But enough about Peter Jackson. (ba-da-bump)

The story is deeply embedded in our culture and probably predates Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame, where Beauty tames and destroys The Beast, so this is probably not needed.

Spoilers Below......

Here's what I thought of the 2005 King Kong:

- Movies about giant apes are made for the big screen. This is worth the money and hassle of going to the theater.

- IMDb says the movie is 187 minutes long, but it seems much longer. Since we all know what's going to happen, they could have easily cut some plot exposition and tightened up scenes and dialogue. By the time they got to the stinking island, I felt I was on that boat for years, probably the intent of the moviemakers.

- Naomi Watts is believable as the chimp's girlfriend, but not a stage entertainer (again, probably the intent).

- And there was a lot more chemistry between Kong and Watts than Watts and Adrian Brody, but I blame the director for that. There was a small sense of hotness between the humans that never got explored.

- Has Brody's nose always been that crooked? The big screen makes it appear like it's more on the left side of his face than the right.

- No one today could have played the demented, neurotic movie director/producer Carl Denham better than Jack Black. I got the sense he was channeling Peter Jackson.

- The CGI was good, notably some of the Brontosaurus stampede. Other moments were pretty weak, especially Kong in the water and inserting the actors into the stampede ("What am I running from?"). By the time he climbed the Empire State Building, I'd forgotten Kong was a CGI model on top of actor Andy Serkis (Gollum of LoTR fame).

- The Empire State Building scene is a heart breaker.

- If you're afraid of heights like me, this movie will drive you nuts.

- Evan Parke plays the first mate. When Black and Brody are developing the script onscreen, they talk about the death of the first mate in their movie-within-the-movie. I started counting the minutes until Parke's character died.

- There is no ship that could take the battering of the Venture and stay afloat, but it's a movie, so blah blah blah.

- Haven't watched Jurassic Park in a while, but it doesn't look like the CGI technology has evolved in the twelve years since, notably when displaying Mr. T. Rex (even three of them in a fight scene). Goes to prove JP was far ahead of its time.

- How did the movie makers get away with the horrible stereotypes during the Times Square stage scene at the end? Yes, the movie was set in the early 1930s, and it was all meant as a homage to the original 1933 film, but still...

- Kyle Chandler brought nothing to his role which is okay. He was playing a two-dimensionable actor with questionable screen skills and Chandler couldn't show his acting chops off much, anyway. Hopefully this role will lead to others where folks can see his range.

- Bugs. I hate bugs. And this movie has BIG, ugly, scary, ravenous bugs. There were people in the audience moaning and crying out loud. And the rumor is gigantic spiders were cut from the final version because they were too gross. They could have left them in. Nobody would have noticed any difference.

And not having to do with the movie:

Lady, if your kid is coughing up a lung, don't take him to a movie through the pouring rain. Everyone there could hear his clogged lungs. Get him to a doctor. The poor thing was suffering. And besides, he was too young to be in that movie theater.