A beautiful looking popcorn movie.

Rating: 6/10 (14 March 2017)

Kong Skull Island is a beautiful and fun film.
I've been looking forward to Kong for quite a while. From what I saw in the trailers, the cinematography and CGI looked amazing. I was worried that the story would suffer from the focus on cinematography and CGI. Thank god it was better than I expected.
Here's the good.
The cinematography and CGI is amazing in this movie, the best I've seen from any movie this year. Each shot is fantastic and interesting and the CGI is realistic and blends perfectly with the actors.
The acting is fun to say the least. Each actor added something to the story, no one was underused and everyone had a purpose. Samuel L. Jackson and Thomas Mann stood out to me. Both of their performances were memorable and entertaining.
The story is very fun. It's what I expected but even that is good. It's a story about a group of people that go and investigate this mysterious island right after the end of the Vietnam war. When they arrive, they discover this island is not what they expected. One thing that added a lot to the overall vibe of the film is that it was in a post Vietnam war setting. It added a lot to the entertainment and set a good tone, it wouldn't have been as good as it is without the time period it's set in. The best part of this movie is easily the end credits scene.
Here's the bad.
The story isn't all that great. I understand that this movie is just trying to be fun, which is perfectly okay, but if you're going to do that you can't take yourself too seriously, and this movie did that. There were a few cheesy parts but they weren't that bad. A few jokes didn't hit with the audience and weren't that funny. The ending of the movie falls flat. The payoff wasn't all that great and happened fairly fast.
There was one character that I think took away from the overall quality of the film. John C. Reilly's character wasn't all that great. He overacted for most of the movie and acted like a cartoon. Only some of his jokes hit with the audience.
Overall, Kong Skull Island is a good popcorn movie where you can turn off your brain for a while and watch a movie with some A+ cinematography and CGI. The characters have good chemistry with each other, even if some aren't all that great. It's good to see Kong back on the big screen.