First off, let me say that I'm a huge Peter Jackson fan. I loved the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy, and consequently, I was really looking forward to seeing this film, too. Unfortunately, my admittedly high hopes were not fulfilled.

On the plus side, and most importantly, Jackson does an amazing job of portraying Kong both as a wild beast and a caring, compassionate creature. Hence, the end is particularly powerful and touching, and I truly did sympathize with Kong and feel his tragedy. In fact, I was in tears.

On the downside, however, the film has a number of big problems.

First of all, the film is too long. Jackson and his cohorts (Walsh and Phillipa Boyens) spent too much time trying to build up a multitude of characters (namely, the shipmates) who, ultimately, don't matter much, and whom you really end up not caring about, despite all the time spent on their development. Focusing instead on the handful of main characters would have allowed at least a half hour of the film to be trimmed from its needlessly bloated 3 hour length.

Secondly, the action scenes are so over-the-top that they become absurd. Painfully absurd. If you're familiar with the Lord of the Rings films, then recall Legolas' single-handed downing of the Mumakil in "Return of the King." It was a fun scene, but it stretched the bounds of plausibility, almost winking at the audience in acknowledgment of its self-indulgence. Now, imagine that scene amplified ten-fold in both length and brazenness, and that's the kind of nonsense in Kong that had me rolling my eyes, and that had the audience around me audibly groaning.

Compounding the absurdity of the action scenes was the total disregard for plausibly in scripting the actions of the scenes' main participants: the creatures. Simply put, animals just don't behave as idiotically as they do in this movie. I'm no zoologist, but I'm confident that a predator with its mouth full of a huge dinner does not bother to chase after additional prey, especially when it's a mere fraction of the size of its current meal. Moreover, a large herd of gigantic beasts doesn't stampede away from a handful of predators that are comparatively minuscule in scale. For that matter, beasts that gigantic simply don't stampede, period; they're too big. Furthermore, any animal trapped in a situation endangering its life will focus its efforts entirely on self-preservation -- that is, escaping its plight -- rather than stupidly trying to continue chasing a meaningless morsel of a meal. Don't get me wrong; the action scenes are exciting. But when the conflicts they revolve around are fundamentally flawed in concept, you find yourself scratching your head wondering, "remind me; what are they fighting about again?"

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On top of those problems, there are a number of plot holes and incongruities. Why do the inhabitants of Skull Island disappear after their sacrificial offering to Kong? I mean, they just vanish! Also, what was the use of the chasm and gate protecting the inhabitants from Kong when ultimately he simply leaps the chasm and breaks through the gate? Once Kong is subdued with chloroform, how do the mere handful of people in the remaining crew get his body on board the ship? When Kong runs wild in the city, why is one street bustling with cars (that careen insanely *towards* an enraged 25-ft ape, no less), while a block or two away, the streets he "escapes" to are devoid of any activity? Isn't "the girl" cold wearing only a party dress while atop the Empire State Building in the middle of winter? I was really disappointed by the holes that easily could have been tied-up with better writing.

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One last complaint: as fantastic as the special effects are for Kong and the other creatures, surprisingly, many of the effects depicting the boats in the water are laughably fake-looking. Not what I expected from an operation that has proved itself top-notch in other capacities.

Overall, I liked the film for how much Kong's love story and tragedy really moved me. Unfortunately, the film's other flaws were a huge detractor to my enjoyment. I loved Jackson's epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, but in contrast, King Kong is bloated, too long, and too often insulting with its self-indulgent action, at the expense of believability.

WETA has once again raised the bar in CGI. With the arrival of Peter Jackson's King Kong, we've come to a point where CGI can be 100% believable throughout the film. During the action-packed 3 hours you don't even stop to think "wow, that's some good CGI", but instead you recognize Kong as a personality.

I'm talking about the real star of the movie, and that should not come as a surprise. Naomi Watts is indeed an excellent Ann Darrow, Jack Black fits in Carl Denham's boots superbly, and Adrien Brody isn't half bad as Jack Driscoll. But, the star is Kong himself... and of course the man 'behind the mask', Andy Serkis. The realization of this giant gorilla is nothing short of perfect. In fact, the only CGI in the movie that's not amazing hasn't got to do with Kong.

Peter Jackson has turned this classic story into a slam-bang spectacle, with more action than many could've predicted. King Kong is also way more emotional than I personally expected. Ann Darrow's relationship with Kong is depicted in a superior way to the original movie. Despite the unbelievable stop-motion effects in the original, I always thought Kong lacked in persona. Well, that has changed. The audiences will have no trouble seeing what Kong's going through, and those eyes of his are probably the saddest sight in any movie this holiday season.

While being a loud and big popcorn-movie, King Kong succeeds in reinstating the original magic related to this tale, and is surely going to be a huge worldwide hit, that's best viewed on silver screen. I don't think many people could expect anything more from this movie than what it is : a professionally crafted, impressive piece of commercial cinema.

We live in an era in which virtually every classic of cinema is being remade, usually for the worse. King Kong was originally a surprise hit for RKO studios back in 1933, the heart of the depression. It had already been remade once, in 1976. That version simply updated the story for 1970s characters and settings, which seems logical enough. I haven't seen the 1976 movie so can't comment much on it, but the consensus is that it was atrocious. However for this latest and, I hope final remake, producer-director Peter Jackson returns to the 1930s setting that was the original picture's present day. In so doing, he gives the story a little of the relevance it once had in its era, whilst simultaneously recreating it as a nostalgic period piece.

The 2005 King Kong is also a far longer movie than either of its predecessors. This extra time is not really used to augment the plot, which is more or less identical to what it was in 1933. Instead, it's used to augment the characters. While the ship's crew of the first movie were nameless dots getting picked off one-by-one by various claymation monsters, here they are real human beings with personalities and backstories (who then proceed to get picked off one-by-one by various CGI monsters, but at least now the toll seems realistically human rather than a simple case of numbers). What's more, the character of the eponymous ape is fleshed out too, his mix of savagery, tenderness and near-humanity given a complex and moving arc. Kudos here also goes to the motion-capture acting of Andy Serkis and the animation team who have done a fantastic job of creating an animal with emotional depth.

The profundity of the screenplay is exemplified in a scene, intercut with the arrival on Skull Island, where Jamie Bell says of the Joseph Conrad novel he is reading "It's not an adventure story, is it?" This is of course theoretically an action picture, but it's an hour into the runtime before we get an action scene. Jackson doesn't pull the cheap trick of manufacturing a fight or a chase simply to keep up the pace, instead managing to hold our interest with creeping tension and character development. When the action does come, Jackson proves his mastery at fashioning breathtaking sequences. There are some truly exhilarating moments, like when the camera moves in on Kong and the T-Rex for the climax of their battle. As in his earlier pictures, one of Jackson's trademarks is little moments of comedy, most notably seen here in the dinosaur stampede. And when the middle hour of the picture becomes an almost non-stop action-fest, Jackson has the sense and inventiveness to give each sequence its own tone, even requesting an unusually sombre bit of musical scoring for the insect pit. Incidentally, it's a superb and sensitive score all round by James Newton Howard.

Finally, one thing that makes the 2005 King Kong special is its open tribute to its roots, not just the 1933 movie but 1930s Hollywood in general. Peter Jackson is very much a modern director on the surface, filling his movies with wall-to-wall CGI and two-second shots, but his understanding of his cinematic forebears underpins it all. The movie begins with "I'm Sitting On Top of the World", but the opening shot is of a shanty town, which is the kind of irony seen in depression-era movies like Gold Diggers of 1933. There's some sly mocking of the stars and scripting of the era, but done so as to be a knowing wink to old-time movie fans. And, with its beautiful rhythm and epic scope (epic being an overused word these days, but this picture truly merits it), this is a version of a Hollywood classic that seems totally in love with the very essence of cinema.