This Week's Hot Pick: 'King Kong'

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Peter Jackson's remake of the 1933 fantasy masterpiece was the most hyped film of 2005 but grossed just $205 million in North America -- about what it cost to make. Yet Jackson's epic is a huge film that recaptures -- and even enhances -- the subtle emotional core that made "King Kong" so beloved. (If you want to compare them, the original is out today as a one-disc DVD.) And he delivers the most eye-boggling, hair-raising movie thrill ride since 1993's "Jurassic Park."

Amazingly faithful to the original, the film stays in the '30s and follows the beats of the story about a film company that encounters a gigantic gorilla on an island full of prehistoric creatures and brings it back alive. But it greatly fleshes out these events, adds new action scenes and significantly expands such signature sequences as Kong's battle with the T-rex and his flight to the top of the Empire State Building.

It also reinvents the three principals. Impresario Carl Denham (Jack Black) is now a young producer on the make, ingenue Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) is a veteran vaudeville hoofer and sailor Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) is an arty playwright. The clumsiest parts of the film are character exposition and early comic scenes. But when it gets to Skull Island in a splendid ship-in-distress sequence, the movie becomes a symphony of dazzling action sequences -- brontosaur stampedes, attacks by giant insects, battles with not one but three T-rexes, and more -- each topping the last. And the finale becomes a star-crossed, tragic "Beauty and the Beast" parable aided by Watt's performance and Jackson's transformation of Kong's love for Ann Darrow into a considerably less one-sided affair.

The DVD comes in one-disc full-screen version and in a two-disc widescreen edition with several making-of featurettes, including an introduction by Jackson, his post-production diaries and pieces on Skull Island and 1930s New York. 187 minutes. Rated PG-13 for frightening adventure violence and some disturbing images. (William Arnold)

GRADE: A