King Kong 2005

King Kong (2005)

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By Todd Karella
December 14, 2005

Movie-Pix Best Guess:

While on location at the infamous Skull Island, a group of filmmakers discover an ancient tribe, an island full of dinosaurs and the might King Kong.

The giant ape falls for the female star of the film and is brought back to America where he trashes New York City.

If you don't already know the story, then you must be a hermit living under a rock.

After seeing Director Peter Jackson's representation of The Lord of the Rings and Middle Earth, how can you expect thsi film to be anything but amazing.

This could be the best King Kong movie ever made, and possibly the best movie of the year.

Even if you have your doubts, the trailers thus far look amazing. This film will be packed all the way through the holiday season, so get your tickets as soon as possible.

Rated PG-13

~ King Crap !! ~

Original Story Synopsis:

With one of the world’s best directors in history, who directed the amazing Lord of the Rings Trilogy, it was reasonable to expect that Peter Jackson’s version of this film to be equally as entertaining. Unfortunately, the film was terrible.
   The special effects were impressive, but the overall story and acting were atrocious. This was even more obvious as the film was well over three hours. With a shorter film some things may have been overlooked.
   The original story is so well known, that it’s hard not to know what the general storyline is. Since this version is longer than the original, it’s obvious that there’s going to be a large number of new scenes.
   The film is set in the thirties and begins with a director, Carl Denham (Jack Black), who is trying to make a motion picture. His backers are bailing out on

him as his film is coming in way over budget and appears to be too much of a wildlife film instead of the action romance that they were promised.
   Ignoring the studio and secretly continuing the film on his own, Carl charters a freighter to carry his crew to Skull island, a mythical uncharted island that is said to be inhabited by unbelievable creatures that no man has seen before.
   But before he can set sail, he must find a new leading lady and get the playwright, Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), to finish the screenplay. This he will do by tricking him to stay onboard too long so that once he realizes they have set sail he will be ten feet from the dock and afraid to jump off and swim, take a boat or a host of many other options that he decides not to exercise.
   The starlet who is picked for the film, Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) is the first attractive female Carl finds while trying to evade the police and make it to the ship on time.
   Ann is a vaudeville actress, who can’t make ends meet as the theatre stops paying her and eventually closes. Even though she is reluctant to take the job, she immediately signs on when she hears that Driscoll is writing the script.
   Having set sail, the cast continues making the film while the crew of the ship begins to question what their true heading is.

After several weeks of travel, bad acting and Jack and Ann beginning to fall in love with one another, the captain gets a message that there is a warrant for Carl’s arrest.
Immediately turning around and heading back to port, something strange happens. Their compass begins to spin and a mysterious fog bank rolls up out of nowhere. The captain, in his divine wisdom, thinks it’s a good idea to continue onwards. When they find themselves surrounded by jagged rocks and a giant cliff face, the captain does what any smart man does in the situation: He begins to turn the wheel wildly in different directions and orders the engines set to full power.

Even a complete landlubber knows that all that’s going to do is leave your ship smashed into pieces and stuck on a reef, which is exactly what happens.
While the sailors take care of repairing the holes in the ship, Carl takes his crew to film and explore the island. Even though they find a scary rope bridge into a walled city filled with sharp sticks with skulls upon them he says it’s okay because it’s obviously been deserted for

hundreds of years. It seems that in the thirties, rope, sticks and half eaten fish don’t degrade back into the ecosystem after hundreds of years.
   Carl immediately finds out he’s wrong when they stumble upon a native girl. Instead of being nice and friendly, he decides to grab her and force her to take his half-eaten chocolate bar. I guess making friends with the natives wasn’t on his priority list. The massive number of decapitated heads sitting on the wooden spikes when they entered would give anyone the perception that this tribe would be peaceful.
   Fortunately, the captain shows up with his well-armed sailors as the group is getting their heads bashed in. But I think that’s in the job description since he’ll show up at the last moment a half dozen times during the film. Unless he plans it that way and is just hiding in the bushes and laughing until they really need him.
   Panic stricken and having lost a couple of good friends and crew members, they immediately head

back to the ship and set sail. But that’s not going to save them from this group of cannibals. These are super Olympic pole vaulting cannibals that use hundred foot poles and can leap from rock to rock, swing onto the ship, overpower some guards, and kidnap Ann.
This is also the point where the audience begins to groan and realize that the quality of the storyline is going downhill and quickly gathering

steam.
But before they can mount a rescue team to save our heroine, the tribesmen have already sacrificed her to the almighty Kong. Nobody really gets a good look at what they are chasing, except for Carl who decides that it’s best to chase after the beast with a camera.
While the actions and behavior of the giant ape seem realistic, there
is no way that any human could survive the shaken not stirred treatment Ann receives as he runs around on all fours with her

clutched in his paw and violently shakes her into unconsciousness. If she was lucky she might have gotten away with her arms being torn out of her sockets and a severe case of whiplash, but she wakes as if she has risen from a nice nap.
As the gorilla slowly begins to accept her, the rest of the film crew continues to follow them supported by a contingent of armed sailors. But as they will quickly find out, they are in serious trouble.
Not only is the island home to a giant simian, but it hosts a number of giant dinosaurs as well. Their realization of this fact culminates in one of the most ridiculous action sequences ever filmed. I like to refer to it as the dinosaur bowling alley.
While looking for Ann, they find themselves walking in a giant ditch. When they come to the end, they see a herd of brontosauruses eating. As they film, a pack of raptors attacks the herd, forcing them to stampede down the ditch. The surprised rescuers end up fleeing away. They then spend the next ten minutes of the film running between the legs of the giant dinosaurs as the stampede continues. Not only is this scene already absurd enough, but the raptors then begin attacking them as well while they all are running in and out under the enormous legs trying not to get squished. The chase finally ends when they accidentally shoot a brontosaurus causing them all to get tangled up, roll in a giant ball and fall off the edge of a cliff. Somehow, only a couple people die in this venture.

Next they will run into Kong who throws them off a tree and into a ravine. A ravine that is filled with giant bugs that attacks them. Even though the bugs look pretty amazing, the scene again becomes laughable. When Jack is covered with giant bugs, it’s none other than Jimmy (Jamie Bell) to the rescue. He’s never fired a gun before, but picks up a Tommy gun and manages to shoot the bugs off him from fifteen feet away while the recoil of the gun causes him to shake and

jerk all over with no possibility of hitting anything. But somehow he does it without hitting Driscoll. No finer shooting has been seen since the A-team went off the air.
At the last moment, the survivors are rescued by the captain and his group of show-up-at-the-last-possible-minute sailors. While everyone returns to the ship, Jack heads off on his own to rescue Ann. After everything that has happened so far, you’d think he’d at least ask for a gun.
Ann may not even need rescuing, as she seems to be falling in love with the giant ape. She sings for him, dances, and juggles. She also spends way too much time staring into his eyes. She stares at him so much and so often that you’ve got to wonder if all the director told her to do for the entire film was to open her eyes as wide as possible, look shocked and then look like she’s about to cry. A couple of times would have been okay, but it became laughable after a while, especially when some of the shots seem to last for several minutes.

Of course, with all that monkey loving, she has turned him into her protector. That was very important since she would find herself the next meal for a T-rex. Kong not only fought one T-rex for her, not even two, but he would fight three of them all at the same time. Not only was this a silly concept to begin with, but he fought them with one hand as he held Ann in the other. Once he had won the fight by knocking them over the cliff, it still didn’t end because they all got

tangled in vines on the way down. So they had to fight in the vines as they slowly fell further and further until they were once again back on solid ground where Kong could finish them all off once and for all.
Of course, when Kong snaps the jaw of the last T-rex and caves in its head it looks amazing. But the whole premise and execution of the fight was just ludicrous.
After the fight, Kong brings Ann up to his sanctuary on the mountain where they can look dreamily into one another’s eyes and enjoy the sunset.

This is where Jack finds them. There’s no explanation of how he found them, but he climbs up through the caves, where giant bats live, and up to the ledge where the two are asleep.
Silently waking Ann they begin to head off the cliff, but Kong awakens and is furious. It would have been certain death for Jack, but using his power over rodents he calls the giant bats to do his bidding and swarm over Kong. (Okay. He really doesn’t have any special powers, but there’s no clue as to why suddenly giant bats would

attack the ape.)
   So how should they escape? Run down through the caves while Kong is distracted? No. Somehow Jack thinks the best way to get down from the ledge is to grasp onto the wing of one of the giant bats, causing it to careen out of control, plummet hundreds of feet and miraculously land in a river to get swept away to safety. Wow, that was some plan!
   Finally they make it back to the village where the boat is waiting to take them back home. What they don’t know is that Carl has talked the captain into capturing the giant beast when it comes to take Ann back.
   Using a lot of rope and a huge bottle of chloroform they manage to incapacitate Kong and take him back to America.

Finally, we get to New York City where we know there’s not much left to see other than total destruction of a major city. The special effects have been good to this point, so utter chaos could be quite rewarding. Of course this even fails as it’s filled with a ridiculous love scene where Kong finally finds Ann and he skates around on a frozen pond with her in his arms. Once again Ann spends several long minutes just wide eyed and staring as if she had found the man of her

dreams.
   It also doesn’t help that Jack, who is trying to stop the ape from destroying one part of the city, gets into a taxi and has him chase him through the entire city. Instead of destroying the small downtown area, the entire city gets destroyed. There’s even an aerial view of the chase so you can see the Taxi wildly swerving, going around in circles and not really having any set direction or purpose. Way to go Jack!!
   At this point there’s not much left other than to have Kong climb the Empire State Building and get shot down. The effects are still amazing and it doesn’t take long for him to get riddled with bullets.
   Even though Jackson has spent over three hours making the audience feel emotion for the giant ape, you can’t help but feel relief that Kong dies. That means that finally this terribly performed and horribly written film is over and you can get back to your life.

Movie-Pix Hit or Miss

Best Guess Results:

What a huge dissapointment this film is.

The special effects are amazing, but the story is terrible filled with silly and cheesy action sequences.

While most critics focus on the length of the film, they seem in awe of the effects and just ignore the fact that the story is ridiculous.

This is not the worst movie of the year, but only because of the cinematography.