There hasn’t really been a decent King Kong movie since the original one 84 (!) years ago. But “Kong: Skull Island” finally sets things to right with a version that’s thrilling, a little bit scary and surprisingly funny.
It’s weird to think how well frights and laughs go together. Go back and rewatch the original Jurassic Park,” and you’ll find what is essentially a comedy with gruesome ingredients mixed in. The new Kong movie has a similar mix of awe, excitement and chortling.
In this version, set in 1973, Kong roams his lonely island in the South Pacific like a fallen god from Olympus. He is worshiped by the few humans living there, who appear to be wayward souls whose became trapped.
There’s also one castaway of more recent vintage, an American WWII pilot played with great mirth by John C. Reilly. When a new crew of soldiers and scientists arrives in their helicopters, his warnings about angering Kong go hilariously unheeded.
Among the new interlopers are Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Toby Kebbell, John Ortiz, John Goodman and Corey Hawkins. They all have their roles to fill, from half-crazed warrior (Jackson) who makes it a personal battle of wills with the great ape, to the peace-loving hippie photographer (Larson) and the survival expert (Hiddleston), who doesn’t actually do such a great job at keeping people alive.
Kong is truly massive in this iteration, the size of a skyscraper, and he’s got some well-justified grudges that drive his dour demeanor. Like the first film, we arrive at the end with a mix of fear and sympathy for him.
Sometimes the third time's the charm, or as with “Kong: Skull Island,” something like the
23rd.
Bonus features are quite robust, and in an increasingly rare instance for video releases, don’t require an upgrade to the Blu-ray edition. It and the DVD version have the same extras.
These include a director’s feature-length commentary track, deleted scenes, a fake backstory on the “Monarch” monster research group and several making-of documentary featurettes. The most interesting one is Larson’s photographs from the production set.
King Kong, along with Godzilla, are the great white whales of moviedom. Their first iterations were unforgettable classics, and since then there have been multitudinous attempts over the decades to recapture lightning in a bottle.
Most have fizzled, and even the best failed to spark half as bright.
Every 12-15 years or so, studios and filmmakers -- and, they think, audiences -- will have forgotten the last (probably disastrous) movie and decide there’s still gold in them thar cinematic hills. So off we go again on another big-critter hunt.
Peter Jackson, fresh off the “Lord of the Rings” movies, gave us his dreary “King Kong” in 2005, and his career hit a slump that lasted until he ran back to Tolkien. “Godzilla” from 2014 managed to hide the monster until the halfway point, which is like manufacturing a sports car that has a top speed of 180 m.p.h. but takes three minutes to get from zero to 60.
So here comes “Kong: Skull Island,” and gosh darn if I didn’t enjoy the thing. It’s goofy as all get out, it has lots of stars but no single compelling character, and it has the sort of final fight scene where the big baddie we think is dead is going to need a couple more tries to get it right.
It’s a fun and surprisingly funny bit of popcorn movie-making. Tonally, it’s all over the map. You’ve got scenes of extreme gross-out deaths and dismemberments -- this may be hardest PG-13 ever given -- set off by silly quips, often within seconds of each other.
On several occasions after a primordial beastie leaps out of nowhere and kills off a couple more members of our intrepid party, they’ll get ready to soldier on and one of them will say something like, “Are we NOT going to talk about what just happened?!?” And the rest will in some way glumly respond that no, we’re not going to talk about what just happened. (Which, of course, is a way of talking about what happened.)
Smartly, big K appears within a couple of minutes of the beginning. He’s got a classic look, grand and majestic and threatening. Kong’s stature has grown with his legend. Climb the Empire State Building? Dude IS the Empire State Building.
Here he’s a lonely god-king, lumbering around his hidden island in the South Pacific circa 1973. He’s angry but also seems sad, and we’ll find out why later. When a bunch of scientists and Army types show up on an exploration mission, dropping seismic bombs and causing a ruckus on his turf, Kong quickly lays down some smack. But he’s got other things on his plate, and humans are just the pesky crumbs.
You want a plot summary? I’m not sure we really need one. Kong rules his secret island, the humans have come in helicopters to find out what’s there, and they quarrel. All 14 choppers are crashed, so it becomes a quest for survival by those who are left.
This is not the sort of movie to quibble over details. You want to know why there are prehistoric monsters on this one island? Let the eggheads bicker about subterranean vents and whatnot. How can there be a permanent hurricane surrounding the island, cutting it off from previous exploration? What are you, a damn meteorologist? Go find some low-pressure systems to warn Aunt Bessie about.
The ensemble cast is a collection of types rather than characters: Tom Hiddleston is the burnt-out British survivalist with suspiciously tight T-shirts and frosted highlights; Brie Larson is the “anti-war photojournalist” (her words) who represents the group’s soulful side; John Goodman is the kooky scientist running a fringe government agency called Monarch that searches for bigfoots, and Corey Hawkins is his dweeby protégé; John Ortiz is the uptight bureaucrat whose role is to be the lawyer in “Jurassic Park;” Samuel L. Jackson is the guts-and-glory wing commander who makes it a personal grudge with Kong; Toby Kebbell is Jackson’s resolute No. 2, who writes “Dear Billy” letters home to his son, which becomes a running theme among the rest; and Tian Jing is the inconsequential Asian supporting character included only to shore up the Chinese market.
The guy who probably had the best time making the movie is John C. Reilly, who plays an addled American pilot who crash-landed on the island during World War II, and can’t understand why nobody listens to the guy who actually knows what’s what. He gets a lot of great one-liners and milks them for every drop.
I also enjoyed Shea Whigham as the taciturn older soldier who’s been around and isn’t fazed by much; after Kong has torn up all their Hueys he offers, “That was an unconventional encounter.” He’s exactly the sort of character who’s kept around to make a noble sacrifice near the end, which goes exactly as we think, but also not.
Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein and Derek Connolly wrote the screenplay, along (I hear) with a host of uncredited others. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts was an interesting choice; his only other feature film credit is “The Kings of Summer,” a tiny coming-of-age indie that made its way around the festival circuit awhile back.
Peter Jackson was originally set to direct “Kong: Skull Island,” but I guess somebody finally got around to watching his first Kong movie. The project banged around and ended up in its current weird but rather wonderful form. Hell, a King Kong movie that throws in an “Oldboy” reference can’t be all bad.
I was going to end this review by harkening back to the first paragraph, which some professor once taught is the mark of a good essay. But I decided it was giving away too much, and if you stick around till the very end you’ll see why.
A redolent back-to-nature manifesto mixed with an ironic teen romp, “The Kings of Summer” is a quirky, enjoyable rite-of-passage indie.
The characters are smarter and more perceptive than one usually sees in this sort of movie, which comes from a pair of feature film rookies: director Jordan Vogt-Roberts and screenwriter Chris Galletta. I see a bright future for both, based on their work here.
Joe and Patrick are lifelong best buddies who are annoyed to the extreme by their home life. So they decide to spend their summer before sophomore year as runaways – they build a ramshackle house in the woods and live there, becoming one with nature and growing into men at the same time.
Joe is played by Nick Robinson and Gabriel Basso plays Patrick. Both offer naturalistic, smart performances that resemble real teenagers, not the usual too-cool types who sound like every word out of their mouths has been penned for them.
Joe is the more outspoken of the two, who hatches the idea to live as wood kings. His mother died a few years ago and his sister (Alison Brie) is already past college and moving into a settled relationship. That leaves Joe to contend with his obnoxious father, Frank, played in full grouch mode by Nick Offerman.
Frank is the sort of guy whose acerbic sense of humor was probably once quite engaging, but it’s taken on a bitter, antagonistic flavor. Frank is deeply unhappy, and he’s doing a great job of making everyone around him the same.
“Look at it this way, in a few years he’s going to pay for you to leave,” Joe’s sister offers as consolation.
Patrick’s parents (Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson) are nicer – too nice. They hover and fret like honeybees over a favored flower, which is so showered with attention it withers away. Patrick agrees to Joe’s plan not so much because he wants to live in the forest, but because anywhere else beats under their roof.
They construct a serviceable abode from spare parts – their front door is from a Port-a-Potty – and set up shop. Somewhere along the way they acquire a sidekick/mascot/hanger-on named Biaggio (Moises Arias), the strange runty kid from their class who speaks in odd declarative non-sequiturs. At first they worry about him killing them in their sleep, but before long Biaggio has become part of the troupe.
The trio of boy-men grow wispy beard-wannabes, bathe in the river and lackadaisically hunt animals with swords (for some reason, they have swords). Though when their food procuring efforts run dry, there’s a Boston Market a short hike away.
Things go alright for a while, with Frank and Patrick’s parents worked into a tizzy that would probably delight them if they were around to see it. But eventually the outside world must intrude, in the form of Kelly (a plucky Erin Moriarty), the girl who Joe is sweet on. She comes for a secret visit that spurs unforeseen complications.
The photography (by Ross Riege) is fantastic, and the by-play of dialogue is clever and biting. “The Kings of Summer” rides off the rails a little bit around two-thirds of the way through, as the story gets sidetracked into romantic turbulence that feels contrived. But like a gifted youth learning a new craft, the filmmakers right the ship and end their adventure on the right note.
