AndersonVision Best Films of 2017: #23 – Kong: Skull Island (Warner Brothers)
KONG: SKULL ISLAND REVIEWED
“Kong: Skull Island” is love. No, not that love between a man and a find Cuban cigar. It’s the kind of love that exists in true fandom. By tweaking the base concepts behind the 1933 and 1976 versions of Kong, something new was created. John Goodman is entering a Ray Milland phase of his career and I love it. But, what about the film? Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts builds the first truly real world for Kong.
If you’ve seen Peter Jackson’s 30 hour long Kong, then you get the basics. Reverent South Pacific culture that gets slightly less racially tinged with each new incarnation worships Kong. Kong fights off rival creatures and generally doesn’t eat the Pacific Islanders that agree with him. Faster than you can feed Moana to a monkey, Western culture intervenes and pisses off Kong. This time, it’s a lip service slam at American intervention in Vietnam. Sprinkle in some Nixon jokes and you too can feel as topical as Forrest Gump working as Murphy Brown’s latest secretary. I’m not worried about my references going over younger readers’ heads, as kids under 18 can’t read anymore.
Still, 2017 saw an event movie about a giant ape terrorizing the perpetrators of Vietnam in defense of a foreign power. If America wasn’t so dumb, the layers of this shrubbery maze would marvel the moviegoers’ minds. But, they chose to see a near carbon copy of Beauty and the Beast instead. I’ll take my giant ape movies. The rest of the world can watch as Emma Watson slowly morphs into John Malkovich.
FILM STATS
- 1 hr and 58 mins
- PG-13
- Warner Brothers
