KING KONG Review by Scott Weitz Rating: After 72 years of exile, lost but never forgotten, today KING KONG returns on movie screens to prove once again his story will rule over every multiplex known to man, in Peter Jackson's worthy and epic remake.

The heart of a young boy captivated by movie magic beats at the center of this towering technological achievement, and the result is a wistful, celluloid love letter to the cinema of years past.  For as much photo-realistic wizardry is used to bring KING KONG to life again for 21st century eyes, Jackson shows no fear basing his story in the old-fashioned emotional roots first planted by the 1933 original.

Peter Jackson, along with co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, chose to confront their remake's obvious problem head-on: rely on the fact that most of KONG's audience already knows how it ends, and re-tell Beauty and the Beast so viewers end up dreading the downfall of their hero they know is coming.   In this pursuit, the storytellers expand both Ann Darrow's and Kong's characters to make their fantastic relationship more sympathetic, grounding it more in psychology than fantasy.  Jackson, Walsh and Boyens deliberately, skillfully raise the stakes of Ann and Kong's bonding to quite literally tragic heights, so the looming, destructive hand of their shared destiny strikes hardest at their hearts and ours.

Indeed, Skull Island's population of ancient, forgotten and monstrous foes has multiplied a thousand-fold since 1933, as have the eye-popping, jaw-dropping special effects used to create them, but fortunately these visually stunning creatures and vistas were neither the reason nor the motivation for Jackson's tale retold.  In welcome contrast to, let's say, the prequel trilogy of the STAR WARS saga — largely a sad devolution into digitally-processed eye candy engulfing pixel-portioned drama — Peter Jackson lead his expedition to rediscover KING KONG with his heart, not his head.

Aside from the smart script and devoted director, the lion's share of KONG's success is credit to actress Naomi Watts, whose skill, subtlety and occasional sheer audacity must bridge the believability gap between character and audience. One can't miss Kong on-screen, nor can you undercut how crucial his character's success is to the film's fate, but the choices Watts made in reimagining Ann Darrow carry most of the emotional load and reap the largest payoff for Jackson.

In a tweak of the meeting scene between Darrow and safari cinemeister Carl Denham, the director desperate to cast Ann in his film remarks that she is destined to play the role in his next adventure — no doubt just as Naomi Watts was fated and most ably suited to fill the shoes of Fay Wray's legacy, cast so indelibly in the 1933 landmark original.

Ann Darrow is still a down-on-her-luck actress, doing what she must (to a point) just to get by in a tough town made even more harsh in the brutal chasm of the Depression.  Performing her comically acrobatic Vaudeville act for a late paycheck that evaporates before she can receive it, Ann as before meets a rogue filmmaker who offers her food, a job, and ultimately a key that unlocks a door beyond which her destiny awaits.

Here the script diverts from the 1933 source by centering on the desperation and disillusionment of Ann's spirit, her resignation that all good things and people in her life get taken away from her.  This bit of backstory, hinted at to deepen Ann's character, of course sets up her life-altering relationship with Kong.  Rather than greet Denham's adventurous quest with plucky-if-naive enthusiasm, as Fay Wray did, Watts steps onto the Venture's gangplank with near-dreadful trepidation.   Ann knows fate awaits her at the far of end of this journey, but walks straight ahead to meet it in steps as necessary as they are unavoidable.

In fact, boarding the Venture Ann meets both of the future leading men in her life, the most conventional of the pair being Work Program play author, Jack Driscoll.  As the unrealized hero-to-be, Adrien Brody plays a much different Driscoll seven decades after the first: bookish but productive, prone to sea-sickness, Jack appears as anything but the rugged, lantern-jawed hero ready to step in and save the day for distressed damsels, as was Bruce Cabot under the direction of Merian C. Cooper.

Ultimately Jack emerges as the unlikeliest of heroes in Ann's life, much like Kong himself — in fact, there are indirect parallels made between them.  After Denham has tricked Driscoll into staying aboard the ship, the only quarters available to Jack are the grimy animal cages below decks in which he must type up the rest of Denham's script (laugh heartily at the symbolism, ye Hollywood screenwriters, laugh!).  When the First Mate teases Driscoll about picking his cage accommodations, he asks, "Are you a tiger . . . or a monkey?"  Alas, for the first leg of this adventure, auteur Jack Driscoll is indeed a chimp chained to a typewriter, attempting to produce Shakespeare on safari for beastmaster Carl Denham.

The larger thematic parallel drawn between ape and scribe plays out as both characters are forcibly, cunningly removed from their own worlds by Denham's indomitable will.  Jack's comfort zone is the theater, but Denham lures him into screenwriting with dollar signs (or the scheming promise of them), and thus Jack reluctantly follows on his mad quest.  The same fate befalls Kong, of course, but it's interesting how Jackson, Walsh and Boyens have fashioned twin "fish out of water" stories in the same tale, both heading in opposite directions and colliding in the middle. 

It is on Skull Island that Brody transforms Jack Driscoll into a man who leads in action, not merely a playwright satisfied writing the lead role for others to perform.   As an actor, Brody is well-suited to play a sort of anti-hero Jack Driscoll: believable in character for his ordinary demeanor, yet showing plausible strength in action because of we readily buy into his lonesome love for Ann.  And as abounds in this story, Jack's and all other love relationships are a destructive force to the body and a redemptive source for the soul.  It's an understated but dramatically crucial role in this epic tragedy, and Adrien Brody meets the emotional and physical demands well.

The largest scripted surprise of Jackson's film is the deconstruction of reckless filmmaker Carl Denham, played with quirky edge by Jack Black, into a much darker and disappointing character. In Peter Jackson's Kongworld, 'animal picture' director Denham is as much a showman and he is a con man, which is a significant departure from the Robert Armstrong character who was truly cut in the mold of 1933's KONG director, Merian C. Cooper.  There is no doubt that a love for big-game adventure burns in the heart of Black's Denham, but his pulse resounds with an alternate beat of larceny in his nature too.

He's less an inspiring force of nature sweeping up his enthusiastic crew, and more a manipulator who cajoles others into joining his escapades — usually by the siren call of signing a check in their name, which we doubt would be good at the bank when and if his crew return.  There is a darker madness behind the eyes of Carl Denham not seen in the original classic, which displays a bit more of Jack Black's dramatic chops, but more importantly underscores the entire story with the unsympathetic thread of Denham's own tragic selfishness. Kong's destruction is Denham's downfall as well, both as a filmmaker and as a man, which sadly undercuts the emotional impact of his final line "twas beauty killed the beast" — now the end note emphasizes that this tragedy was manufactured more by Denham's selfishness, and less by Kong's ill-fated relationship to Ann.  This is Jackson's most puzzling and least successful straying from the classic source material that inspired his filmmaking career.

In an ironic twist, Jackson illustrates a true love for movies' ability to inspire an audience to magical heights of dramatic wonder, but mirrors this affection with a disdainful view of how costly in human terms it can be to live for illusion alone.  Denham has lost his way in that pursuit, and the secret map pointing his collaborators to Skull Island is reduced to just another showman's trick up Carl's sleeve used to get what he wants.   The map is less a guide to adventure, and instead gives Denham his last desperate clue to a direction and purpose, after his own moral compass is in a spin.  Ultimately, Denham is recast as an self-indulgent exploiter, not a show biz explorer.

Perhaps this modern Denham's lack of idealism was meant to make him more palatable and interesting to audiences today, but the darker shift in his character taints the inspiring fable embodied wholeheartedly in the original KONG.  Yet in an unanticipated way, Jack Black is perhaps the ideal actor to cast as Jackson's devious but likeable Denham.  Black has often walked the fine line between outrageously funny and slightly disturbing in several previous comedic roles.  But recently he has shown some dramatic depth as well in roles like SHALLOW HAL, where he must earn audience sympathy and not just act out as the unrestrained Id viewers love to watch but can never get away with being.

Jack Black is mostly successful in portraying Denham as a man with one foot on higher moral ground, and the other mired in his own desperate need for professional redemption.  This is truly a tough balancing act to perform for three hours, and a risk-filled role for the actor and Peter Jackson.  Yet Black's uncanny ability to invite both an audience's willingness and trepidation to follow him serves KONG as well as the character allows.  If Black has less than successful moments in the film, I place the responsibility on the troublesome new path charted for his character by the script, and less so on the performer.

Of course, this entire adventure stalls in futility at the dock without centering the story on a believable, empathetic and awe-inspiring Kong, and likely this is Peter Jackson's most definite success of his remake.  Which is to say, this is Andy Serkis' most definite success in a career built upon enacting characters of computer-crafted fantasy.  If the lowly, loathsome Gollum captured your sympathy or ire in Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, likely you will be astounded by the technically invisible yet emotionally powerful performance Serkis invests into a 25-foot tall gorilla.

No doubt fans have seen numerous "making of" documentaries and promo spots for KONG, wherein special effects wizards tell, like proud fathers, about the unprecedented number of muscle controls are available Kong's CGI face. Also no doubt fans have seen such dazzling feats of silicon legerdemain fall completely flat when a director falls under the spell of his own ingenious tools and tells an idiotically empty story.  Jackson once again avoids this digital-era pitfall, and with all due and high respect to Joe Letteri and the WETA visual effects team, actor Andy Serkis is his no-longer secret weapon in the ongoing war to make digital drama relevant.

Every one of those geekified, synthetic facial muscles allowed the actor behind the digital mask to perform his craft with ferocious power and heart-rending pathos.  In a larger sense, the physical structure of Kong seen on-screen was animated by WETA wunderkind, but the character of Kong was performed just as humanly on the soundstage as was any fellow actor in the cast. Indeed, Serkis often performed in a pseudo-gorilla muscle suit to guide his bodily actions for motion capture, but as the film's leading "man" he acted eye-to-eye with Naomi Watts, giving both actors the requisite personal and emotional connection needed to portray their characters tragic relationship. I often found myself forgetting Kong was a special effect at all, because I could always sense the reality of an actor behind the furry fantasy creature stomping, leaping and roaring across the screen.  That is a true achievement, and Serkis' KONG will likely set the dramatic standard for all future CG-invented characters yet to take the stage.

Aside from the sharp alteration of Denham's character, a general flaw in the film is its length, most notably gained in two sections which would benefit from disciplined tightening: the opening sequences in New York and the "monster rally" on Skull Island.  A little too much time was spent establishing Depression-era life in the beginning, and Ann's professional plight and personality could have been set up just as well with judicious trimming.  When the Venture crew invades the jungles of Kong's domain, they endure a gaunlet inhabited by every predator in the zoo in sequence after sequence.   The relentless string of threats blunts their intended adrenal impact on the audience, as Jackson and WETA Digital throw everything at the victims but the KitchenSinkosaurus.  Ironically, Jackson and his fellow Kongophiles showed much more discipline and restraint recreating the lost "Spider Pit Sequence" for the 1933 KONG DVD release, than they did in their own film.  In these sequences of the Jackson's tale, less would have definitely been more, and made for a leaner, less distracted, more powerful remake.

Still, the best advice for this film's audience: revel in the technical achievement of Jackson's remake later when the multi-disc DVD release arrives to reveal the magic behind the mirage.  For now, buy your ticket, sit back and let the revival of nostalgic wonder that first captivated moviegoers' hearts and imaginations 72 years ago entrance you again with the beauty and the beastliness of KING KONG.

It was never Peter Jackson's goal to replace the original 1933 KING KONG — for it's a film he adores and reveres as a filmmaker and a fan — but his retelling of this tragic fable stands as a worthy, slightly flawed, but respectful descendant of the King, and long may they both live.