Friday, December 16, 2005

King Kong - 90%


This is possibly the best computer animated live action movie ever made so far. After watching this 3 hour epic, I took a step back and thought : Wow! Ann (Naomi Watts) and King Kong hardly exchanged any words. King Kong certainly didn't say a single word throughout the entire film. Yet, the amount of emotions exhanged between the 2 way surpasses many others that I've seen in so many other movies laden with dialogue (and sex).

This movie is 3 hours long, and I hardly find it draggy. Though 2 other people I know who watched it thought it so. Story is basically about a movie maker who managed to grab his crew to an undiscovered island to shoot his film. Ann Darrow was a performer who is struggling to feed herself and was provided with an opportunity to star in this film. Unfortunately, the island was inhabited by some rather unfriendly natives who immediately grabbed Ann and offered to King Kong as a sacrifice. But amazingly, King Kong and Ann developed a relationship beyond words, and throughout the film, you see how the 2 tried to protect each other from harm. Interestingly, Ann's love interest, a screenwriter played by Adrien Broody, was on his own journey throughout the entire film trying to "save" Ann. This setup, with 2 male characters, one human and another a huge gorilla, caring so much for the character of Ann, is so wonderful. The contrast of the 2 lovers, at times fighting against each other, while trying to protect the girl from harm was extremely well written.

The action sequences in the film were incredibly choreographed too. the dinosaurs stampede scene was breathtaking to behold. And the fight between the 3 Tyrannosaurus Rex and King King was spectaular. And the 3D animation of this movie is possible the best ever created up till this point in movie history. And we're talking live realistic animation. And this 1000 pound gorilla is just like the real thing - behavior wise especially.

And all these are the result of the ingeniuity of Peter Jackson. Honestly I never thought LOTR were that great a series, mainly because of how overly dramatic some of the scenes were and how "forced" the emotions were created in the trilogy. But here, JAckson managed to strike a perfect balance. And like I said before, the fact that no dialgue was exchanged between Ann and King Kong, and yet the director was able to bring out a believable sense of love and care they had for each other, was an outstanding achievement. This movie is destined to be a classic.

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