KONG: SKULL ISLAND
Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Jing Tian, Toby Kebbell, John Ortiz, John C. Reilly
Rating: (M)
Three and a half stars (out of five)
Yes folks, there’s yet another megabudget shared universe competing with the Marvel juggernaut, and it’s coming to a multiplex near you for the next umpteen years ...
I’ve always been a fan of monster flicks (so much better than boring old superheroes with their tortured existential crises), although the ones I watched when I was a kid were normally filmed for about $5 and featured two guys in rubber suits pummelling each other senseless on a cardboard set.
The great thing about Kong: Skull Island is that, despite the millions poured into it (the effects are really something), it always remembers it’s just a big, dumb piece of eye candy designed to have you leaving the theatre with a stupider grin on your face than when you went in, and unlike Jackson’s bloat fest it doesn’t make you wait over an hour to see the giant monkey.
In fact, barely 20 minutes in and Kong is swatting helicopters like flies and stomping on soldiers as if they were roaches. Forget plot and character development, of which there is admittedly some, and give me Kong ripping the tongue out of a reptilian monster while insects with legs the size of trees impale hapless cannon fodder on the ground. Now that’s entertainment!
- Jeremy Quinn
