Not the gorilla my dreams

While in Windsor for the holidays Dave and I and his friend Wayne (who is so cool that he has the hungry hungry hippos t-shirt lower down on my blog!) went to see the new King Kong movie. Wayne and I laughed the whole way through, but not the "hah that was funny" but more of the "what the heck were they thinking" laugh. Dave disagreed though and thought it was a pretty good flick. Here's 10 reasons why I thought it wasn't.

1. Gratuitous references to "boobies" just really aren't that funny. Let's get past grade 4 humour.
2. Sticking a bunch of characters we were given a chance to care about (and ultimately didn't) in a jungle to fight off the most random bunch of whatever animals/insects from the Paleozoic to presumably modern era just doesn't make for a plot.
3. When will holywood ever tire of stereotypical natives with scary (and badly made up) faces dragging off blonde haired, blue eyed women? There are some things better left in the 1930s, and I found this whole part of the movie to be pretty badly done.
4. I really don't think Jack Black should be making movies where he is supposed to be a (somewhat) serious character. He seemed so self aware of his own acting in the movie that it felt like you weren't watching the character instead you were watching Jack Black playing character, hoping to get a reaction out of you.
5. 188 minutes is waaaayyyy tooooooo long.
6. When we were at Kong's, well, home, for lack of a better word, with bones strewn everywhere I couldn't help but think "what if all the people whose bones were there had been better at song and dance and juggling, like the heroine?" For all we know, had their vaudeville skills been better they might still be there.
7. There's only so many times when you watch a movie where you'll say "oh no, there's a dinosaur/vampire bat/crazy huge insect/giant ape/scary native/etc.! The characters will all surely perish! What's that? Look, they made it through!" before it becomes pretty pathetic. Even people who have lived in caves for the last 70 years know the big ape ends up in New York city swiping at planes from the top of the Empire State Building.
8. Funny how there can be snow on the ground and you can be up at the top of the Empire State Building for hours, but apparently so long as you're a beautiful blonde wearing a skimpy white dress you won't show so much as a goosebump, let alone die of hypothermia. (being a cute blonde also makes you immune to being shaken to death by a giant ape when he's running around/fighting dinosaurs/etc. as he holds you in his hand like an ice cream cone, FYI)
9. Dude you can't bring up Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" without saying "the horror, the horror." It just has to be said.
10. Despite what my writing style may lead you to believe, you can only have so many tangents. The movie had WAY to many tangents, and the movie likely would have been much better without many of them.

Bottom line: I'm fully capable of suspending disbelief; this movie didn't really make me want to do it. Good thing we went on tightwad Tuesday to the cheap theatre!