Who's the Monkey and who's the Organ Grinder?
  It’s not the job of a film review to spoil the ending of films, to give away the entire plot, to leave nothing to the viewer’s imagination. However, I am compelled to sum up the ending of King Kong: “It’s not good for the monkey!”
  King Kong is the first ever Hollywood blockbuster film that is made about itself. Jack Black is inspired in the role of Peter Jackson, where he plays a once credible director who’s now as low on cash as he is on credibility. Of course the real Peter Jackson is suffering no cash shortage at all — thus proving my point that he’s without credibility!
  Like all good action films, Kong begins with a big schmaltzy musical number as the camera pans across the skyline of Auckland, where, oddly enough, everybody speaks in an American accent. It’s here we’re introduced to Naomi Watts a recently out of work Vaudeville hoofer who — though broke, tired and hungry — refuses to take on a soft porn stage job to make ends meet. This once again strikes at the heart of Jackson’s credibility. He can’t get Watts to do even a tenth of what a proper director, like David Lynch, got her to do in Mulholland Drive.
  Enter Jack Black to save the day. He’s in conference with studio execs trying to sell them his latest film idea. A film with a budget every bit as out of control as a giant monkey in New (Zealand) York, no script and no real stars . . . hmmm King Kong?
  Black is selling a concept. The monkey and the organ grinder . . . and if you’re trying to get Hollywood to grapple with the biggest organ it’s ever seen then you’ve got to get the biggest monkey to shake the tin.
  So Kong is not just a giant monkey, he's a metaphor for Hollywood’s finest acting talent running around (literally) larger than life, rattling the can, and shaking the cage, in the hope to get noticed. Stay with me this is brilliant . . .
  Hollywood producers do what they do best (grind their own organs) and the monkeys are just the actors holding out the tin to the unsuspecting movie going public. As usual, Hollywood couldn't come up with a new tin, so they just dug up and old one rubbed it three times and wished that everybody would believe it's actually something new. Kong first came to life in 1933 in a black and white number produced for RKO by Merian Cooper — proof that art imitates life: the first Kong almost sent RKO to the wall. That said movie folks actually worked in the 1930s, in 1933 alone Cooper produced Kong and 29 other feature films. Unlike the 29, King Kong was an unexpected hit, that said, who would seriously expect it to have been one?
   Four decades later came the remake. How did Universal Studio's bill this one? "The most exciting original motion picture event of all time." Only a Hollywood film exec could believe that a re-make can be truly original. The film did have a couple of things going for it: Jeff Bridges and maybe the worst typo of all time with Jessica Lange in the leading role as, Kong’s squeeze, Dwan.
  Now, Kiwi director, Peter Jackson gets a hold of the idea and applies some ridiculous formula that says the length of the film should be in direct proportion of the height of its lead character. I knew about Jackson’s use of this formula when creating the Lord of the Rings trilogy. There were three darned long films — and Frodo was only three feet tall! What about an ape 40 feet tall?
    I’m not saying it was the longest film of all time, I’m just saying I don’t ever want to see the longest film, no matter what it is. Back to King Kong (2005) and the lady sitting two rows behind me with a baby . . . had another baby.
    My giant size Coke and popcorn had long since evaporated and I was forced to duck out for a rest stop. By the time I dashed past every cinema in the cineplex to find a toilet and then make my way back I was completely lost. I eventually resumed my seat only to realise that I was watching the fourth installment of the Jurassic Park trilogy — as manic carnivorous dinosaurs tore up the landscape in pursuit of some poor human quarry.
    Is it only me, or does a 40 ton dinosaur chasing a small human equate to a real person rampaging through downtown Manhattan in pursuit of a Ritz cracker topped with cheese?
    Just as I was about to leave and find Kong, Kong jumps on the big screen in Jurassic Park and starts wrestling dinosaurs. Why are there dinosaurs in King Kong? Maybe the film was distributed in Japan as The Island of Godzillas (with a special guest appearance by King Kong).
    So the giant ape abducts Naomi Watts to make her his plaything. They fall in love and in a four hour motion picture Peter Jackson can’t answer the two obvious questions about this affair. Why? (any Jerry Springer fan could work that out). But, more importantly, how?
   The next big how, is how to capture the big monkey and ship him back to New York? The answer: they lure him to the ship, overpower him with chloroform (1933’s number one date rape drug) and then tie him to the bunk in his cabin and have their way with him. Anybody who’s ever taken a P&O cruise will appreciate the total lack of originality in that approach.
   Back to New York, the film about Kong flops but post screening Q&A sessions with the star are a hit! But after continual badgering from the tabloids and paparazzi, and sick of Naomi sneaking in to every matinee screeing with her new squeeze, Kong quits the show. He refuses to give the studio any residual rights to the film and holds firm to their pre-production agreement that the monkey retains all rights over merchandising. Then it gets ugly. 
   Kong runs all over Manhattan, climbs the Empire State Building and gets shot. He falls off and our story ends with the world’s tallest computer generated ape taking its last gasps on the roadway at the bottom of the world’s tallest building.
   Quite frankly it was a wooden performance by the ape and the humans in this film took their lead from Kong. In forty years time when this old chestnut gets warmed up again why not try a whole new approach — cast a real monkey in the lead and then surround him with computer generated people!