King Kong

King Kong is just a big, cuddly gorilla who might rip apart a dinosaur or two if you mess with his lady. Plus, he likes to slide around on ice and watch a sunset with his blonde-haired beauty.
At least that's the impression you get from watching Peter Jackson's three-hour epic.
The movie starts slow, but Jackson picks up speed once we get to the jungle and the dinosaurs and the big-footed hairy star of the show.
Jack Black, Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody all manage to shine in a movie that's much more concerned about a gorilla roaring and smashing and swinging his way around the jungle and later tossing cars and climing the Empire State Building in Manhattan.
For the most part, it's your all-too-typical Hollywood blockbuster with eye-popping special effects.
But as my English professor friend, who accompanied me, pointed out, there's more beneath the surface, and what you find is not pretty.
The 1933 version was chock-full of racial stereotyping, and though much has improved in this 2005 update, you can still find plenty to object to.
Let's start with the depiction of the natives. Eyes wide, chanting, dancing wildly, bearing misshapen teeth, they almost seem like apes, and for dark-skinned people, that's never a good thing.
That was the top of the list for my friend. It probably wasn't Jackson's intention but nevertheless my friend and I came away from that offended.
My friend also reminded me of the other racial implication when I asked her quite pointedly "Why the brotha have to die?" She wondered whether I meant the big brotha or the little brotha.
Yep, King Kong, when he first came out, was the black man-as-beast savaging the pure white woman. Jackson, thankfully, moves away from that and tries to imbue Kong with some complexity. So we have the scenes of him saving Ann Darrow, played here by Naomi Watts, numerous times and then of Darrow doing pratfalls and juggling balls in front of Kong, who sits there pounding his chest. And then we have scenes of him throwing violent temper tantrums. You wouldn't like Kong when he's angry. He might just chomp your head off.
And we have one character who's always seen reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an interesting choice for such a movie given that book's own controversy over what some call its racist depiction of Africa.
Still, we end up caring about the big guy. We're sad when we see him chained up on Broadway, and we're happy when he breaks free.
But we all know how the story ends. He's atop the Empire State Building, swiping at planes as they pump bullets into him. And then he falls to his death as tears stream from Darrow's eyes. He sure did love that white girl.