And yet another belated contribution to the 12 Grand in Checking New York in Movies Blogathon:
Monkey see, monkey do
You could imagine Peter Jackson as a nine-year-old, boy seeing Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's 1933 King Kong for the first time, marveling at the images (the screaming blonde in a gargantuan grip, the monster battling a vicious Tyrannosaur, the climb to the top of the Empire State Building) and sparking the interest that would someday lead him into filmmaking. Cut to twenty-five years later and here it is, Jackson's Kong, at a hundred and eighty-seven minutes almost twice as long as the original and at $207 million around three hundred times more expensive, it's poised (according to all reports) to be a critical and commercial smash, possibly Jackson's dearest wish come true. He should remember though the dangers of wishes coming true: the film is a bloated, overlong, sticky-sweet bore.
