Unabashed popcorn film is enjoyably unpretentious entertainment (Kong smashed real good)

Rating: 7/10 (20 August 2018)

And unabashed popcorn film, with no deeper meaning or subtext, is delightfully endearing in it's simple (although big budget) adventure story. Set during the waining day of the Vietnam War, John Goodman plays a government agent specializing in the strange and mysterious has discovered an uncharted island and convinces his superiors to give him a detail of soldiers from Vietnam to help him explore the titular island. That island is full to giants monster, mysterious natives, and also a WWII pilot who was shot down 25 years ago and doesn't know the war is over. John C. Reilly really steals the movie as the WWII solider marooned on Skull Island, but he does have competition from Samuel L. Jackson as the commanding officer leading the US soldiers helping Goodman, British airman Tom Hiddleston, and photojournalist Brie Larson. The action is fun, the characters are likable, and Kong smashes things real good. Beside John C. Reilly being awesome, the next most interesting element to the film is that it was set during the Vietnam War and treats the era with a rather light touch and not the usual downbeat tone that typically surrounds Vietnam set war films, which is something I cannot recall seeing in any other major film before (unless you want to count John Wayne's "The Green Berets"). Throughout the 70s and 80s, most every Vietnam war film was pretty heavy, and even the ones with a lighter touch, like "The Boys in Company C" or "Good Morning, Vietnam," still made sure the audience was aware that this was a terrible and horrific war. The version of Vietnam depicted in "Kong: Skull Island" has the costumes, musics, and all the other trappings of just about every other memorable Vietnam film you can think of (from "Apocalypse Now" to "Born on the Fourth of July"), but it kind of just blew my mind out uncomplicated this war was presented. World War II has seen a lot of entertaining sci-fi and horror mash-ups, from Michael Mann's "The Keep" to Disney's "Bedknobs & Broomsticks" as well as lesser underrated films like "The Final Countdown" or "Zone Troopers." There are so many of this sort of film that there's even an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to it. As for Vietnam, I think filmmakers stayed away from making light of that war because it was such a damaging war to our nation, not just politically and militarily, but culturally. Seeing the Vietnam War portrayed so differently in a blockbuster summer popcorn film made me realize that maybe we've reached a point in history where we've put enough distance between ourselves and that nearly 50-year old war, with three generations (Gen-X, Millenials, and Generation Z) who did not grow up with this war being part of their lives. It reminds me of the old Mark Twain quote, "Humor is tragedy plus time." For better or for worst, enough time must have passed now for Vietnam to now be fun. But I digress. Now Kong smashes things real good, fighting giant snakes and all sorts of other made up creatures. The CGI effects are excellent, but I'm a grouchy old man about CGI effects. I really want my giant movie monsters to either be men in monster suits crushing miniature sets or to be stop-motion animation. Computer generated animation takes me out of films and might as well be cartoon animation as far as I'm concerned. CGI works for backgrounds and explosions, but it doesn't work for for living people, animals, or creatures. Still, despite my annoyances with Hollywood's overuse of CGI, "Kong: Skull Island" is pretty fun for a number of reasons, but primarily because of it's excellent cast and it's unpretentiously fun action and adventure, which comes off as a nice old fashioned adventure yarn, which is exactly what you need in a retelling of classic monster movie.