Love, actually?

King Kong (2005)
Universal Pictures presents a Peter Jackson film, starring Naomi Watts and Jack Black. Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Jackson. Based on a story by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace. 187m. Rated PG-13 for frightening adventure violence and some disturbing images.

3 stars

The three hour runtime of Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” isn’t the film’s sole source of comparison to “Titanic.” But would you believe in similarities between the epics’ love stories?

Fay Wray amassed over 90 screen credits, but it’s her embodiment of the original Ann Darrow that most people recall. Each time the mighty Kong – alternating between 18 and 50 feet in the 1933 version – gripped the petite blonde, Wray would unleashed an piercingly loud scream. Later, she would come to understand the beast meant her no harm. Yet, many would argue, the film always suggested unrequited love, no matter how many times we watched it.

Jackson, given carte blanche on this project after the financial success of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, tinkers with the established storyline enough to create a new perspective. We just have to wait until the 14th reel to see it clearly.

There are practical origins for this collision course between beauty and beast. Ann (Naomi Watts) is a Vaudeville performer, struggling to find work during the tail end of the Great Depression and the advent of the sound film era. She encounters maverick director Carl Denham (Jack Black) is a scene laced with all sorts of fatalistic implications.

Their union is sensible: In her, he sees a low-cost replacement for his leading starlet, who has dropped out of the picture amidst rumors of its imminent collapse. In him, she spots an opportunity: not just for steady employment, but also to meet her unsung hero, playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody).

While both Driscoll and Denham vied for Darrow’s affections in the original film, the fantasy filmmaker mutates into a non-entity for this update. (I think Jackson rightly assumed Black was too goofy to be a potential suitor.) While the mood is light before the crew descends on Skull Island, the tone changes considerably after Darrow is kidnapped by the natives for a sacrificial offering to the great beast.

The most powerful hour of the film is its cross-cut between two equally remarkable storylines. In the first, Kong brings Darrow to his stone hideaway. In the second, a search party encounters the most wretched beasts of a long-past civilization: dinosaurs, giant centipedes, scorpions and flesh eating swamp worms.

Buttressed by an omnipresent score by James Newton Howard, the interplay between Darrow and her 25-foot tall captor is surprisingly tender and convincingly lighthearted. Kong, the alpha male of this Conradian jungle, vociferously asserts his dominance over his human prey. But a funny thing happens. Darrow, no stranger to screaming, doesn’t cower in the darkness of Kong’s imposing shadow. She jumps straight into her Vaudeville routine to disarm him.

Aha. This is our payoff for patiently witnessing the film’s sometimes arid first hour. These detailed back-stories were not solely for Jackson’s amusement; they are a prelude to this defining moment.

And whether or not you believe that a comic performer could entertain a wild animal is moot. “King Kong” has long required a suspension of disbelief, to suppose that the most untamable beast could fall in love with a heady blonde. Since we’ve accepted that for 72 years now, it’s not hard to subsequently accept that Darrow actually reciprocates those feelings.

Jackson’s remake is a “three-hankie tragic love story,” as Slate’s David Edelstein puts it. But despite its tender heart and occasional cheese, there’s also a fair amount of adventure for those testosterone-addled audiences who didn’t come to see “interspecies love.” (again, thank you Mr. Edelstein)

The stop-motion animation battles of the original film were the modern technology of its time. Jackson, who has already demonstrated his prowess in the CGI realm, employs it in this update to produce genuine moments of fear, exhilaration and surprisingly, laughter.

Consider the film’s most fascinating scene: Kong protects Darrow from a triad of Tyrannosaurus Rex specimens. The battle is relentlessly tense, but concludes with a famously lighthearted sequence. Standing over his dead enemy, Kong uses the dinosaur’s mandible like it were a squeezebox. This shot could have been quite intense, given the circumstances that preceded it. Instead, we’ve already been provided the sense the beast means our heroine no harm. So we laugh, mere minutes after we were prone to unconscious utterances like, “Whoa!” “Yikes!” and “Watch out!”

It’s problematic to assign human attributes to a wild gorilla. Kong is made more human because of Andy Serkis, an actor who was outfitted with hundreds of sensors to make Kong’s features come alive. There were reportedly 132 captures taken for each facial movement alone, so it’s not hard to see how we’re essentially duped into believing Kong is more human than your ordinary 25-foot tall savage.

But does it work, especially given its three hour plus runtime? Undoubtedly, that assessment will be determined on an individual basis. I felt taxed by the film’s conclusion, as if I were made to endure something alternately pleasurable and painful for far too long.

Jackson was provided significant leeway when adapting “The Lord of the Rings” novels; their immense attention to detail undoubtedly required over nine hours of film. But now he must be reigned in again. He needs an editor who can order him, without hesitation, to trim his features. The problem, of course, is that Jackson was paid a reported $20 million to direct this film, something that suggests complete autonomy. Let’s hope for the sake of our sanity – and our throbbing derrières – that he exhibits a bit more self-control next time.