May 6, 2004

I wouldn’t call myself nitpickity, I would prefer to be called Critical with an aggressive intensity.

I look at every film, good and bad, with the same attention to detail from the story to the script to the casting right down to that strange volleyball-thing that brings up the rear of every movie credit list for the last 40 years. I take no less stock in the title, which I believe should, to least some degree, suggest what I am paying for without insulting my intelligence.

I bring this up because I am still bothered that a studio executive underestimated my expectations in regards to the sequel to 1976 remake of King Kong. The movie is called King Kong Lives for no other reason than, I would assume, the studio was afraid I wouldn’t be sold on a movie about a dead one. I should also tell you that Kong is the only thing in this movie that isn’t dead. The rest is pretty much stillborn.

KKL sits in an odd place, it’s a crappy sequel to a crappy remake of a movie that wasn’t begging "Oh! Oh! Remake me! Remake me!". Dino De Laurentis, feeling that there was still a dime to be bilked from the legendary gorilla decided that a sequel might be a good idea. The movie is nothing if not ambitious. Let me put it another way – the movie is nothing but is still ambitious.

Ready for that little nugget of ambition? Get this: The story suggests that Kong’s tumble off The World Trade Center didn’t actually kill him (which I kinda figured since in the last movie he didn’t leave a giant SPLAT in the middle of New York City). He has actually spent 10 years in a coma in a government research facility in Atlanta while scientists have been trying to develop an artificial heart (yes, an artificial heart). The movie quickly answers the question of how medical technicians are able to care for a 50 foot comatose ape but no one questions WHY they would care for a 50 foot comatose ape.

Questioning the film's logic is not isolated to that scene. We have other issues:

Problem: Kong needs a blood transfusion.
Solution: Find another 50 foot ape with the same blood type . . . which they find, a female in Tennessee (gee, I woulda looked there first *shrug*).
Problem: Kong feels all gooey when in the presence of a mate
Solution: Break free and return to the jungle with mate.
Problem: The government spent billions of dollars on that heart surgery and they’re not gonna let him off that easy.
Solution: Fill him full of lead.
Problem: If you shoot a 50 foot ape in the jungle and kill him won’t that render the whole heart surgery business useless?
Solution: Well, we never quite get around to that.

What Dino does offer is some sloppy monkey love which he chooses to leave (mercifully) offscreen. But we are not spared a roll in the hay by the films stars Linda Hamilton and Brian Kerwin as she observes "Humans are apes too". Not the slickest of pickup lines.

If I mentioned that I was too inquisitive about the title then you’ll have to permit me to point out one more itty bitty little lapse in continuity: The heroine tells the Army not to shoot the female because she’s gone into labor. This comes only two days after the first time the Kongs mated and one would have assumed that with a gestation period like that DeLaurentis was financing The Planet of the Apes. Damn him! Damn him to hell!