Common Sense Note
Parents should know that the movie includes numerous violent scenes that may be frightening for younger viewers and some action pushing the PG-13 edge. Specifically, humans are attacked on the island by giant bugs, bats, and dinosaurs in sustained, pounding action scenes. Kong shifts from scary (chest-pounding and roaring) to sympathetic; he is attacked brutally by men in tanks and planes, shooting guns. Characters drink and smoke cigarettes; Ann wears a slip through most of her adventures on the island. Most troubling is the depiction of the black island natives, who appear as nightmarish, surreal images, chanting and shaking when they sacrifice Ann to Kong. The show-biz version of this scene (recreated in New York) uses blackface performers.
Families can discuss the relationship between Ann and Kong. How does their mutual affection extend beyond person and pet, to something more complicated? How does Denham's exploitation of Kong parallel his exploitation of people? How do the military attacks make Kong increasingly sympathetic (even an underdog, out of place in the city), as he tries to protect Ann and then she tries to protect him? How do the blackface performers serve as commentary on mainstream fear of the "unknown"?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
In Peter Jackson's KING KONG, the relationship between Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) and the giant ape is everything. The men around her adore her and even indulge in heroics to save her, but none is so compelling a personality as the gigantic motion-captured gorilla (acted by Andy Serkis, who performed Gollum for the Lord of the Rings films) who comes to love her.
Barely surviving the Depression in NYC, Ann loses her vaudeville job just when film producer Carl Denham (Jack Black) is seeking a leading lady for his new project, involving an excursion to the "unknown" Skull Island and a self-loving costar, Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler). Ann is soon coping not only with hunger, but also with a crew of men who range from exploitative to overly solicitous.
Jackson's adaptation of the 1933 original film -- written with his usual collaborators, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens -- follows Merion Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's film in examining the excesses and vagaries of show business, most plainly embodied by the cynical, devious, and strangely self-knowing Denham. A stand-in for all sorts of driven, arrogant, and beleaguered filmmakers, he turns his excursion to Skull Island grandly delusional. He tricks earnest playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) into coming along and stern Captain Englehorn (Thomas Kretschmann) into persisting until they literally crash into the island.
If the men follow pattern, what sets Jackson's movie apart from its predecessor is its characterization of Ann, and specifically her relationship to Kong. Taking a page from the Mighty Joe Young movies, this Kong has Ann empathize with her gigantor captor. Though she does her share of screaming, Ann quickly shows a plucky, even droll sensibility, showing courage when she scampers bravely about the island in her slip, and her insight when she is grateful for Kong's protection against fierce dinosaurs and bats.
In this version, it's not "beauty that kills the beast," but greed, meanness, and fear that destroy his admirable "nature" and emblematic manhood. As many viewers have pointed out, the 1933 film is pervaded by disturbing racism, in its depictions of the Skull Island natives, extended to the fearful specter Kong provides in relation to the perfect white woman. Jackson's film makes Ann's admiration for Kong an earnest distraction from her eventual, proper coupledom with Jack.
While the movie demonizes the black natives who throw back their heads and chant during their ritual to sacrifice Ann to Kong, it also offers a complication in the ship's courageous, sensible, and black first mate, Hayes (Evan Parke). It's telling that Hayes does not see the reenactment of the tribal ritual as Denham's stage show, populated by performers in overtly offensive blackface. If this scene illustrates the movie's awareness of the problem (the crude translation of blackness by a white "producer"), it's not quite a resolution.
Neither is the relationship between Ann and Kong, though she tries mightily to do right. A couple of brief, idyllic intervals (gazing on a sunset from atop Skull Mountain, sliding playfully on a lake in Central Park) only underline the impossibility of their romance, as they are violently interrupted. "Good things never last," she tells Denham when she meets him. If he's the embodiment of her fear, Kong is a last stand against it. At once sensational and heartrending, it's an intimacy that can't last.
Families who enjoy this movie should see the original film, King Kong (1933), or the 1976 remake. You might also like both versions of Mighty Joe Young (1949 and 1998).
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentCouple kisses; Ann runs around in her slip on Skull Island. Reference to "boobies." |
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ViolenceKing Kong fights dinosaurs; dinosaurs stomp and eat people; King Kong bites a person's head off, tosses bodies (including young women) fecklessly; giant bugs attack humans; in NYC, military shoots Kong off ESB. |
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LanguageMild cursing. |
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Social BehaviorFilmmaker is crass and greedy; military is brutal; King Kong means well. |
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CommercialismNeon signs in Times Square advertise '30s products (Chevrolet, Coca Cola, Pepsodent). |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoDenham drinks from flask, crewmen smoke cigarettes. |
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