Thursday January 31st 2008
The original version of King Kong is one of many films on my list of Films I Should Have Seen but Haven't. I think I've never watched it because we all know there's some bird who gets kidnapped by a big monkey then decides she quite fancies it, then he ends up at the top of the Empire State Building and gets shot off and falls down and dies. She has a bit of a cry and then we all fuck off home. So I figured I don't really need to watch it...
The reason I just watched this new version is because it was �3 in a sale after Christmas, and I thought I might as well give it a go seeing as Peter Jackson made it. I still love him for Bad Taste (one of the most influential films of my younger days) and Braindead, and I'm sure Lord Of The Rings was amazing but I don't really like those sort of stories so I didn't get on too well with it. In fact I downright hated the first one, secretly enjoyed the second one (but wouldn't want to sit through it again), and was a bit gutted that I paid to see the third one at the cinema instead of waiting for some stupid friend to buy the DVD so I could have borrowed it and watched it for free. But basically I'll always give him the benefit of the doubt based on his past glories, and for a pound a disc (do the maths - 3 discs, �3) I decided it was worth giving this a try.
So in goes disc 1 at about 10.30pm, have a quick look at what the special features are and decide none of them are really worth it unless it turns out I really enjoy the movie, then head back to the main menu to start the film.
10.35pm - Jack fucking Black is one of the main characters? This just got so much better... I'd like him to leave the planet and never come back, he's more annoying than 1000 Jim Carreys following you around pulling that stupid face right in your line of sight every single second of the day. Then at night all the Jim Carreys would laugh continuously when you're trying to sleep, resulting in you being awake for ever and ever and ever. I would prefer to that happen rather than seeing or hearing anything to do with Jack Black ever again. I grit my teeth and wait for something to happen. Ooh, here's some chloroform on the boat, bet your arse this will come in handy for making Kong fall over later on so they can take him back to New York where he can tear things up and get the woman up the top of the tower while he waits to be shot down by planes. Jack Black has got a treasure map or something, and he makes the boat driver take them to this island on the map which he reckons nobody has ever seen. Not sure how they managed to make a map of it then, but still...
11.10pm - the boat went all wobbly, and now they've crashed into some rocks and realised they must be at Skull Island. I think the rocks shaped like massive monkey heads in the water might have helped them come to that conclusion. Cock Black gets in a boat with his camera crew and goes over to the island, where they have a look around and get ambushed by a load of really fucked-up natives. One of them gets speared through the chest, then everyone fucks off back to the boat. While they were on the island, the sailors repaired the damage to the boat from when it crashed on all the monkey head rocks and now they're ready to sail off again. The thing is, a really badly animated CGI native polevaults onto the boat and kidnaps the woman (her name is Ann Darrow, but I can't not call her Ann Davro - it's like at school when I always used to accidentally say Jan Dildo instead of Jill Dando on the rare occasion that I found myself having to say the words Jill Dando. Who I've just typed as Kill Dando twice in a row just now, which is spooky). The menfolk realise she's been kidnapped and go back to the island to bring her back. While they're making their way back, the natives hang poor Davro up by her arms and wait for Kong to come and have his way with her. Something happens and he ends up taking her off her special platform and carries her off into the jungle. Some other stuff happened with the men being on the island trying to work out where she'd gone (mysteriously the hundreds of natives who were all there 5 minutes ago have now all disappeared and are never seen again throughout the entire film), and then...
11.40pm - "the adventure continues on disc 2", which means I have to get up and switch discs. I'd just got comfy as well.
11.41pm - the men are all in the jungle (there's about 20 of them or something), and the rest of the film is spent trying to avoid dinosaurs and find Kong and Bobby Davro. There's a bunch of those huge dinosaurs with big long necks that Jurassic Park taught me are leaf-eaters, so no peril here. But then some smaller dinosaurs turn up and chase the big dinosaurs, which in turn chase the people along the edge of a big chasm type thing. This is where I almost started properly enjoying it, but the CGI was so incredibly awful - you could almost see bits of blue screen. I swear the first series of Knightmare was more realistic than this. Still, a dinosaur pileup was good fun to see at the end of the chase so I give that segment 3 cigars out of a possible 5.
This is followed by loads more dinosaur antics, and to be honest I completely forgot I was watching King Kong and became convinced that someone must have broken into my house and swapped the disc to Jurassic Park when I blinked one time. There's some dinosaurs, and some more, oh and here's some more. Meanwhile she's off with Kong having some fun - she does a dance on a clifftop, juggles with some rocks, and playfully allows him to stand her up and push her over again and again and again. Being pushed around like that by a giant gorilla would have pissed me off tremendously, but I guess if you're not quite sure if he's friend or foe you just have to go along with it...
Page 2 yeah!