Great monster fights, very dull humans. The (almost) perfect monster movie.

Rating: 7/10 (11 March 2017)

A 15-story ape throws a palm tree like a dart through the windshield of a Vietnam-era Huey with Creedence Clearwater Revival playing in the background.
And that's just the first thing Kong does.
If all you want is more stuff like that, plus some amazing monster on monster battles, then this is the movie for you. If you're looking for compelling human characters to go with those fights, then you walked into the wrong auditorium.
Kong:Skull Island is the second film in the still-forming Monsterverse, the first being 2014's Godzilla. As such, there are several threads to tie these two films together. Don't worry, there are no real spoilers here.
Of course, the main point of this film is to see King Kong fight some monsters, but the story before that involves John Goodman's character, an agent of Monarch, the monster organization from Godzilla, lead an expedition to Skull Island. Ostensibly, they are there to survey an uncharted island that's been inaccessible for centuries, but as the humans soon discover there's more to the mission than first thought.
To qualify the opening statement, this film is really not about any of the people shown. As such, no character is given any real development or subtext except for John C. Reilly's character, a stranded World War II fighter pilot named Marlow (read as reference to Apocalypse Now, which this film clearly emulates, down to its Vietnam-era setting and themes.) At times, the human characters get their brief hints at deep moments, dragging the scenes out too long, until some are inevitably killed by one creature or another.
However, by far the best parts of this film are the creatures. Obviously Kong is the main creature, and the CGI work on him is incredibly detailed. But the other creatures as well, such as a giant water buffalo, giant spiders, and especially the lizard-like Skullcrawlers, are all entertaining to look at whether the humans are (trying) to kill them or Kong is bashing them apart.
This film is really about the monsters, as well it should be. All of the great monster movies of old followed the same basic set-up. Some human story that gets characters to go on some vaguely-defined mission that quickly falls out of importance in favor of epic battle scenes between two or more monsters, broken up every so often by more human scenes which serve only as a rest break for the audience between battle scenes.
This film follows that model to a tee, and in a sense is a response to criticism of 2014's Godzilla which had hardly any great battle scenes between Godzilla and the MUTOs, and too much human interaction with characters we didn't necessarily care about.
The humans do indeed take more of a back seat in Kong, and there are way more creature battles and action scenes. However, the humans still have slightly too much screen time, and at these times the movie plods.
Nevertheless, this film is worth it for the creature battles alone, and the end credit scene which reveals so much tantalizing promise for the future.