Never Thought I'd Miss Naomi Watts Ice-Skating...

Rating: 2/10 (19 March 2017)

I was looking forward to this latest over-sized ape. Coming from the studio who brought us the 2014 Godzilla, starring a stacked cast, and boasting a stylishly fun trailer, I was all-in. Unfortunately, Kong is a special kinda bad, like a throwaway 90s adventure with as much brains as subtlety. It's corny but cynical; it's tongue-in-cheek but mean-spirited; it even made me miss Kong ice skating with Naomi Watts. It's an awful scattershot of varied tones & overwhelming styles. In a re-imagining of the discovery of Kong, a group of scientists, explorers and military-men in 1971 make a trek to the mysterious & monster-filled Skull Island. It's full of some of the biggest actors around, both up-and-coming & veterans. Sadly, it's one of the biggest wastes of a great cast in years, as they are given an unbearably clichÃ©d and incomprehensible script. The soldiers (Jackson) are angry, the scientists (Goodman) are reckless, and the pretty white people (Hiddleston, Larson) are romantically shoved together. The character purposes are unclear, the dialogue is mind-numbing, and the message is essentially, "Violence: bad. Empathy: good." Even the basic choice of creating intrigue is pushed-aside, opting to obnoxiously shove us into the monsters' faces from the get-go. It's all as graceful as Kong himself. Not that it isn't stylish; just the opposite. Director Vogt-Roberts decided that if you CAN use a cinematic trick then you SHOULD. Random zoom-in / push-outs, incessant slo-mo, quick edits, old-style reel-to-reel effects, and laughable 3D-only shots; it's a boring theme-park ride, including narrative heft. There's lots of great stuff in theaters: Logan, Get Out, Split, Lego Batman (which has Kong in it!); don't waste your time on this loud-garbage.