Entertainment

10:31 AM CST on Friday, March 31, 2006

By TOM MAURSTAD / The Dallas Morning News

Like a lot of people, I was excited at the prospect of Peter Jackson remaking King Kong. Then I heard the movie was more than three hours long and every bit of interest in seeing it, at least in a theater, drained away.

Which would seem to set up the 2005 blockbuster that couldn't bust (underwhelming opening weekend, no best-picture Oscar nomination) to finally enjoy some breakout success. It's a perfect-storm situation: big, flashy movie, high interest among an audience of potential viewers put off by the idea of a three-hour tour to Skull Island and back. Bring on the DVD so the viewer can condense this movie to the 90- to 100-minute thrill-ride melodrama it should've been in the first place.

It turns out, however, there's a downside. Judging by the blown-away exclamations of critics, Peter Jackson's CGI-a-go-go take on Kong was "dazzling" and "visually stunning." But in this highly touted era of home theaters, when more and more people are watching their DVDs on high-definition TVs, the switch from big screen to small screen leaves King Kong looking really, really fake.

Start with the opening scenes of Depression-era New York City with the panoramic skylines and gritty hustle-bustle street life. Almost all of it looks like what it is, an elaborate special effect. In every outdoor scene, almost everything looks digitally conjured; there will be the one real taxi that the characters are getting into amid a stream of computer-generated traffic.

And then there's the voyage to Skull Island, during which we watch a fake steamer ship chug across a fake ocean (with fake waves lapping at the fake hull) under a fake sky. Even the sunlight looks fake – such a weird, white-crisp light. And then, of course, there is Skull Island. Some of what's seen in the closer-in shots is obviously the good, old-fashioned fakery of constructed sets and props. But once you're swooping over and trudging through the jungle, everything seems to glow green, not from the dense jungle foliage, but from the green screen the actors are standing against.

There are just so many little details that are distractingly inserted: the cartoon stones that Naomi Watts juggles to amuse her big-ape boyfriend, the grapefruit-size mosquitoes pestering the rescue party. The cumulative effect is to constantly break the spell that magician-director Jackson is trying to cast and keep you under. He takes the same densely layered approach to Kong that he so successfully used with Lord of the Rings, but the story of King Kong is a simple one. 'Twas beauty killed the beast. It's not a worlds-within-worlds creation like Tolkien's, and that overheaped imbalance of effects vs. content is laid excruciatingly bare.

That's a theme only heightened by the bounty of bonus features included on the second disc of the "2-Disc Special Edition." Again, packaging trumps content. The "Post-Production Diaries" showcase a week-by-week breakdown of the movie's making that you can rummage through either chronologically or by subject matter. Two documentaries take a look at "Kong's New York, 1933" and "Skull Island: A Natural History." The latter centers on the conceit that Skull Island is real. It's just the sort of Trekkie-nerd flourish that die-hard fans will love and everyone else will find unbearable.

E-mail tmaurstad@dallasnews.com

King Kong

C Starring Naomi Watts, Adrien Brody, Jack Black and Colin Hanks. Directed by Peter Jackson. PG-13 (violence, intense imagery). 188 mins. plus extras. $30.98