Movie & Video reviews

Ben Dugan

1/26/2006 - KING KONG (2005)

  I was recently on a layover and had some time to spare in Seattle, so I decided to see the new King Kong film. The previews didn’t do a sound enough job to sell me on a reason to see the movie, but I decided to check it out for the sake of a review. I will be completely honest in that I think I was the only person in the movie theatre who did not completely enjoy the film. Everyone was laughing and goofing around and thoroughly enjoying themselves. They weren’t concerned with my opinion nor were they aware of my critiquing the film for review purposes. This leads me to believe that the movie producers had accomplished just what they had wanted. King Kong follows the normal formula for an action movie, which has a big story item to reveal. It takes an hour or so to set up the plot (which moved at a snail's pace). Whereas I was completely bored and annoyed, the rest of the audience was laughing at the jokes and the back and forth banter of the miscast Adrian Brodie, and Naomi Watts. Naomi Watts fulfilled the role of the pretty young blonde; this role was much better acted by Jessica Lange in the 1976 version. An overall analysis of the movie is that the new legend (of Lord of the Rings fame) has tried to make another Lord of the Rings installment. This is KING KONG, not Lord of the Rings. The elements and similarity to the Lord of the Rings movies are blatant and apparent. The native tribes on Skull Island are made to look exactly like the Orcs from Lord of the Rings. I was waiting for Bilbo Baggins to pop out and Samwise Gamji to offer him another biscuit so they could continue their quest to Gondor.

  Set in the 1930s, this story is true to the original storyline from the 1933 movie.

This is the story of a young and beautiful actress, Ann Darrow from the world of vaudeville, who finds herself lost in Depression-era New York; but her luck changes when she meets over-ambitious filmmaker Carl Denham. The beauty and the beast finally meet their fate back in the city of New York, where the filmmaker takes and displays the ape in quest of his fame by commercial exploitation. This ultimately leads to catastrophe for everyone, including playwright Jack Driscoll, who falls in love with Ann and plays an unlikely hero by trying to save her from Kong and her destiny.

  The love story is forced and unnatural and the acting is completely awful. I was also confused while watching the film, if perhaps I wasn’t watching the fourth installment of the Jurassic Park series. They actually had King Kong fighting with dinosaurs and bats as if in a WWF arena. How completely ridiculous this notion was! Colin Hanks was completely miscast and it was just an excuse to give Tom Hanks' kid a role. His character was completely pointless. The movie producers also used the same slow motion fighting action imagery as they used in 1996’s The Island of Dr. Moreau. It didn’t work in that movie and it didn’t work in this movie, either. The problem with this movie is that the focus was too much on special effects. They absolutely nailed 1930s New York (but that accuracy and detail overshadows the movie subject itself; aren’t we all there to watch a 45-foot gorilla?)

  Now whereas I did not care for this movie, none of you will listen but will spend your hard-earned money to see the special effects. That is certainly your choice, but don’t say you weren’t warned. If you are interested in seeing a good King Kong film, I would recommend the 1976 version (still one of my personal favorites). Enjoy the show.

KING KONG (1976)

  This was one of the big blockbuster films of the 1970s. This film was lauded for being different from the original but all of the plot points still worked.

  This was Dino De Laurentiis' infamous remake of the 1933 classic.

  Forget about making a movie on Skull Island. In this version of the film, it is the prospect of huge oil reserves that first draws outsiders to the island - a team of Petrox oil company people led by Fred Wilson (Charles Groden). Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges), a scientist, stows away onboard because he wants to study the animal life on the island. As for the blonde bombshell that will be the Beauty for Kong's Beast, Dwan (Jessica Lange) is found floating aboard an empty raft in the middle of the ocean. Everyone is surprised to find a group of natives living on the island, but Jack must have some kind of extrasensory perception because he figures out much too easily that the natives worship a gigantic living ape god and sacrifice maidens to it for their own protection. The natives kidnap Dwan from the ship, hand her over to Kong, and you pretty much know what happens from there. It is unfortunate, of course, that the climax of the film takes place at the World Trade Center rather than the Empire State Building, but the Twin Towers were new at the time and offered a stunning backdrop for the final confrontation between Kong and man.
  I suppose we're all clear on the fact that King Kong is not the monster in the story; he's a victim - a victim of extreme exploitation in this 1976 version. Wilson only wants to use Kong to make himself rich, and he actually reveals him to the world from behind a gigantic gas pump (one of several incredibly strange images in this film). Thankfully, Kong makes this guy pay this time around. It's painful to see the big guy brought so low in the end, though. Kong is easy to sympathize with - he's just another poor sap destroyed by love. He's a lonely guy doing his own thing back home, and then this gorgeous blonde shows up right in front of his eyes. It's love at first sight, and he does everything he can think of to impress the girl, yet she just keeps running away. He keeps chasing her until he winds up humiliated and helpless, with thousands of eyes staring at him in his moment of defeat. Still, after moping around and feeling sorry for himself for awhile, he rises again and makes another bold attempt to win the girl back, but that only ends in total disaster. And, of course, the girl then figures out that she sort of loves the guy after all, but it's too late to do him a lick of good. I don't know about you, but that sounds kind of familiar to me.
  This film is not in the same league as the 1933 original (it's not even close), but it is worth seeing. Kong is a unique monster character whose story always manages to touch the heart, even in an overblown, frankly weird adaptation such as this one. Plus, it's unintentionally amusing - especially in terms of the not-so-special effects. Recommended for entertainment value. AND better than the 2005 version.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Review by Travis Lavan 

In 1960, the infamous ‘Rat Pack’ - Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop – filmed the first of the signature ‘Rat Pack’ films, Ocean’s Eleven. That film has its fans to be sure, but they tend to be the type of people who are entirely and unnaturally enamored with the mystique of the Rat Pack itself, or with the unique period appeal of old school Las Vegas. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. There’s an undeniable chemistry between the Chairman and his boys, and who could resist taking a look at Vegas back in the day?

  But let’s be honest. There are some films that are interesting primarily because of who is starring in the movie rather than thanks to the quality of the movie itself. The passage of time was not any more kind to the original Ocean’s Eleven than it was at first to Las Vegas itself. What was originally a moderately watchable but poorly paced vanity project was wryly reinvented as the slick and entertaining modern ensemble piece it was originally intended to be. Vegas itself evolved from a tacky, aging monument to American postwar vagary to…well, a tacky, contemporary monument to American post-Millennium vagary.

  In each case much the same idea, but the execution this time around was far superior.

  I wish I could say the same for Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a film that, like the original Ocean’s Eleven, derives what miniscule level of relevance it does have only by virtue of its appealing cast. As a matter of fact, Mr. and Mrs. Smith almost feels like a remake itself, as most cinema remakes tend to be tepid, uninspired exercises in risk avoidance, trading in the opportunity to take an old idea to new places for the facile mockery of cashing in on a memory.

  Wasn’t Cary Grant or someone in this the first time? Something about it all seems so familiar that it isn’t impossible to believe that this film hasn’t been done better before, somewhere in the gauzy past during a simpler, more innocent time. (It was supposedly inspired by a short lived mid-90s television series of the same name and premise. The fact that it starred Scott Bakula and that you have never heard of it should tell you something.)

  Mr. & Mrs. Smith is the sort of film that does have tons of potential; Pitt and Jolie curiously inhabit the roles of a man and woman who would seem to be hopelessly destined for one another. We quickly discover that they both are working for similar, but entirely separate (not to mention entirely unnamed) international spy agencies without each other’s knowledge. They meet in Columbia on separate missions and the result of some quick thinking and an inferno of personal chemistry is that they manage to save one another’s lives and develop a healthy sexual attraction to one another.

An attraction that dissolves the moment they marry, and their respective secret lives quickly contribute to the new Mr. and Mrs. Smith living a quiet, unspoken life of half truths and outright deception. Neither is aware that the other is also a spook, but the need for secrecy causes their union to devolve into one tepid, wordless, dispassionate year after another.

  As a matter of fact, the movie begins in promising fashion with the two in marriage counseling, behaving the way many blissfully oblivious couples do when faced with their own failures. They gamely shrug off the problem and assume that the one asking the questions is the one who has a problem.

  This could have been amusing, and once they discover the other’s identity and end up on assignments to terminate one another, the film could have become much more than the sum of its parts. Each incensed at the other’s deception, the competitive drive between Smith and Smith that has remained muted their entire dull marriage re-emerges with volcanic fury as two people who secretly admire one another express their pent up passions through acts of murderous rage and hateful retribution.

  Sometimes, nothing adds spice to a relationship like a little good old-fashioned anger.

  As it was, Mr. and Mrs. Smith takes a potentially clever idea and turns it into a repetitive series of sight gags, droll one liners and implausibly explosive life and death situations where nobody’s life is actually in any real danger. What’s worse is that none of it seems connected by any sort of plausible plot thread and the film’s attempts to bring the jilted lovers back together feel as hopelessly contrived and misplaced as anything you’ll see in any movie as long as you live. If I didn't know better I'd assume the screenplay to this film had been the winner of a 'write your own movie for Brad Pitt' contest and some lucky housewife in Peoria Illinois is telling all her friends how she scribbled three paragraphs onto the back of her heating bill and got a check and two plane tickets in the mail six weeks later.

  Like the breathless readers of the National Enquirer, Mr. and Mrs. Smith wants Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to be married, break up, try to kill one another but still end up together again anyway so badly, there’s never any suspense to this film, and what humor it has is offset by the hopeless transparency of it all.

  Even the appearance of Vince Vaughan, usually a cause for celebration, is just another lukewarm run around the block as Vaughan shows up, channels that guy from Swingers, collects his paycheck, and then hurries back home and into the loving embrace of Jennifer Aniston.

  Truth be told, this was the only aspect of any interest for me during the course of this film. Brad Pitt stars opposite Angeline Jolie, future mother of his child who pulled him away from ex-wife and America’s Sweetheart™ Jennifer Anniston, who then found true love in the waiting arms of Vince Vaughan, who also stars as Pitt’s best friend and confidant in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

  I’m no scientist, but shouldn’t that have opened an inter-dimensional wormhole or something?

  This much said, I freely admit that if they ever decide to start casting Americans to play James Bond, Brad Pitt is going to get a call. And if James Bond ever decides to start wearing a dress, Angelina Jolie may as well suit up because she and Pitt manage to prove in spots during this film that they more than have what it takes to play any role demanded of them.

  At times it is hard to tell whether the cult of personality surrounding some celebrities has more to do with their own innate charisma or with the intense, desperate need of the untalented to feel connected with the talented. Then there are the beautiful and the talented themselves. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are in my opinion two of the most talented actors in film today and the chemistry they have together on screen is undeniable. Whether this is a product of their talent or their mutual affection for one another is hardly relevant; it is the sort of thing that seldom happens in cinema and it is truly special when it does.

  The effervescent interplay between Pitt and Jolie undoubtedly carries the movie in spots where it falls flat (which is often), and keeps it afloat when it otherwise would have dipped beneath the waves and hit bottom (it never actually hit bottom but I could still see manta rays digging themselves into the sand from where I was). But the finest actors and all the chemistry in the world can’t save an unpolished script, nor can it make up for lack of plot or uninspired direction. Director Doug Linman doesn’t get behind the camera often, and the results (Swingers, Go, The Bourne Identity) have been generally satisfying. Mr. and Mrs. Smith however, feels more to me like the sort of film that gets made simply because A-List stars are lured to it and less because it deserves to exist.

  Some day, Pitt and Jolie will make a movie together that is worthy of their respective talent, but while they may have enjoyed working together on this film, take it from me – it was more fun to be on that side of the screen than it was to be on this side of it.