Snow Day Movie Part 2

King Kong: Extended Edition
M'House
DVD
12/5/07

So after Toy Story, Maddy went to sleep. It was still snowing and Jamee was still working, so I decided to finally sit down and watch the extended version of Peter Jackson's King Kong. One of my all time favorite moviegoing experiences was seeing King Kong with Jamee at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring. It wasn't this version. It was the 1933 one with Fay Wray. That one's great. A little bit racist, but great. Peter Jackson's version... not so much.

It felt like Jackson had been given a blank check and unfortunately used it. You can't argue that it looks like every cent he was given shows up on screen and that he tried to give audiences their money's worth, but it's bloated and unwieldly and just too much. It feels rushed, too, like he needed a break after Lord of the Rings and just didn't get one. I'm curious to see The Lovely Bones since it feels like now he's had a chance to recover from Rings and Kong. I'm especially curious because I hated the book.

That's not to say that there aren't good things about Kong. The hour or so that we spend on the island is very good, especially in the extended cut, where sequences have been added back in to better pace everything. It didn't feel as choppy this time as it did in the theater. But even the island stuff begins to go on for too long and by the time we get to New York it feels like the movie should be over, but there's still at least a half hour to go.

Still, they don't even try to make movies like this very often, and while it's a mess, it's fascinating to see how it just doesn't quite work.