This Friday, King Kong will return to movie theaters for the first time since Peter Jackson’s bloated misfire.  Coming off The Lord of the Rings, Jackson could have done whatever he wanted with a blank check, and he blew it on a 3-hour plus retelling of cinema’s most famous ape.  It honestly was a case of someone who loves the material, loving it to death.  We don’t even get on the boat to Skull Island until over an hour into the picture, and every crew member is not as interesting as the members of the Fellowship of the Ring, but they sure got the screen time.

It’s such a dull beginning that by the time you get to really good stuff, like Kong fighting multiple Rexes, you’re numb, and WE STILL NEVER FIND OUT HOW THEY GOT THAT APE ON THE SHIP!!!  Then the stuff back in New York is so hit and miss, but the ice skating scene in Central Park is painful, and Jack Black manages to butcher one of the most famous lines in cinema to close the film, so you may have guessed…..this is not a favorite film of mine.  The beauty of this column is that even crap films have amazing scenes and it’s fun to denude them of their baggage and just love a big ape punching out some t-rexes.