60
King Kong lives! But only just. This is an uneven adventure that’s saved by the spectacle of its towering title character and the various beasts with whom he shares his island home.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
65
It lacks neither fun nor polish, but it has the square tidiness of a compartmentalized fast-food meal.
70
In the struggle between sober subtext and monster-movie goofiness, the goofiness mostly wins out.
58
Kong: Skull Island may include some clever period details and idiosyncratic asides, but it’s largely a blockbuster B-movie less interested in depth than scale.
60
For all its updated bluster, this update still can’t escape the shadow of 1933’s magical King Kong.
80
We Got This Covered by Matt Donato
Kong: Skull Island is a grand cinematic adventure powered by furry fury, as the horrors of war blend with chest-beating creature confidence.
60
This is a creature feature, plain and simple — and, at least on a visceral level, a satisfying one.
20
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
This fantastically muddled and exasperatingly dull quasi-update of the King Kong story looks like a zestless mashup of Jurassic Park, Apocalypse Now and a few exotic visual borrowings from Miss Saigon. It gets nowhere near the elemental power of the original King Kong or indeed Peter Jackson’s game remake; it’s something Ed Wood Jr might have made with a trillion dollars to do what he liked if he’d been given a trillion dollars – but minus the fun.
80
The Telegraph by Robbie Collin
A large part of the enjoyment comes down to the sheer earth-shaking lunacy of Kong’s daily grind, even before the human intruders are factored in.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
This highly entertaining return of one of the cinema's most enduring giant beasts moves like crazy — the film feels more like 90 minutes than two hours — and achieves an ideal balance between wild action, throwaway humor, genre refreshment and, perhaps most impressively, a nonchalant awareness of its own modest importance in the bigger scheme of things.