I went to see King Kong on Friday night, a movie I have been looking forward to seeing for quite a while. And I wasn’t looking forward to it because of Peter Jackson or any reason in particular, other than the fact that it looked pretty amazing in trailers and commercials. Overall, I’d say I came away quite impressed.

The film has an excellent rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and most of the negative reviews cite the fact that the film is over three hours in length as a drawback. After watching the movie though, I didn’t feel that it was excessively long at all! In fact, if I didn’t know any better I wouldn’t have thought it was a three hour movie. I thought it flowed quite well, and unlike some other long movies (Pearl Harbor, for example) there was no point at which you go “ah, it could have ended there.”

A group of us went on Friday, including Sharon who said that she really didn’t like Jack Black. I on the other hand was quite impressed by Jack Black and somewhat disappointed by Adrien Brody. I think Black played his character very well, even if he did have some of the cheesier lines in the movie. Brody on the other hand didn’t seem to make his character that endearing – I was less interested in his character than almost any other.

The CGI in King Kong is quite simply, amazing. There was only one, maybe two places where you think “ah that looks kind of like a green screen” or something. For the most part, I felt the CGI was so good you don’t even realize that you’re watching something that isn’t real. Well, aside from the fact that there are dinosaurs and bugs as large as houses. Some will say that the movie went overboard with all of the different creatures on the island, but I think it was an incredibly brave undertaking by Jackson and his crew, and it paid off. The movie would have been much less interesting if they hadn’t created an entirely new world with really a entire ecosystem all it’s own.

The stars of the movie, King Kong and Ann Darrow, were awesome. Naomi Watts was brilliantly cast, and she did a great job considering almost ever scene she’s in has tons of CGI. In a lot of places she looked kind of like Scarlett Johansson, but other than that, I don’t have any ideas for who else I would have cast. Andy Serkis once again brought a computer generated character to life, and he did a great job at it indeed. Kong is very believable throughout the movie.

There were only minor oddities with the film. For instance, the beginning of the movie does a good job of portraying Depression-era New York (the film takes place in 1933) but when Denham and his team return from the island a month or so later with Kong, everyone seems rich again. People will think the creatures were overdone, but I think the Natives were overdone. I mean really, they were incredibly too ugly, and far too scary. The airplanes at the end seemed kind of fake, but fortunately they were probably the worst of the CGI. Maybe it’s because I have seen Serendipity too many times, but I felt that the ice skating scene was far too “stereotypical New York”.

Yes on the whole, I really enjoyed King Kong! There is a lot to like in the movie, and the critics are right, it’s quite a ride. The action sequences are incredible, broken up by a very interesting storyline. I am not a huge Lord of the Rings fan, so I don’t know if Jackson-faithful will enjoy the movie, but I think most others will.