90
A surprisingly tender, even heartbreaking, film. Like the original, it's a tragic tale of beauty and the beast.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
90
Los Angeles Times by Carina Chocano
King Kong is an homage not just to the original but to the history of movies themselves.
60
This Kong is high-powered entertainment, but Jackson pushes too hard and loses momentum over the more than three hours of the movie. The story was always a goofy fable--that was its charm--and a well-told fable knows when to stop.
75
I say this as someone for whom the very idea of a Kong remake is sacrilege, Jackson's straitened conception yields up a pretty damn good popcorn movie.
100
New York Daily News by Jack Mathews
What a movie! This is how the medium seduced us originally.
90
The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt
The gorilla is great, the girl terrific, sets are out of this world, creatures icky as hell, and the director clearly does not believe in the word "enough."
100
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
One of the wonders of the holiday season.
100
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
Here is the jaw-dropping, eye-popping, heart-stopping movie epic we've been waiting for all year.
50
Our response to the ape's doom, once touched by authentic tragedy, is now marked by relief that this wretchedly excessive movie is finally over.
90
Almost too much of a good thing, Peter Jackson's remake of the film that made him want to make movies is a super-sized version of a yarn that was big to begin with, a stupendous adventure that maximizes, and sometimes oversells, its dazzling wares.
In classic Peter Jackson fashion, the cinematography and special effects reign supreme in this remake. Although I appreciate Jackson's desire to make Kong more than just a maniac beast, adding touches of true emotion and human-like tendencies, the film is still dragged down by the problems of the original film: the giant gorilla is merely a veiled attempt at getting away with portraying the "Buck" stereotype. Until the racial origins of the original film are addressed, there can be no remake that doesn't simply further that narrative, no matter how pretty the picture may be.