✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Cinema

Kong: Skull Island film review ★★★★★

09 Mar 17 – 09 May 17, Times vary

Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson and John Goodman slum it in the gloriously dumb Kong: Skull Island

By CW Contributor on 3/3/2017

Brie Larson (Room), Tom Hiddleston (Thor) -  Kong: Skull Island, King Kong sequel
Brie Larson (Room), Tom Hiddleston (Thor) - Kong: Skull Island, King Kong sequel
Kong: Skull Island film review 3 Kong: Skull Island film review Matthew Robinson
Looking back, it’s apparent that King Kong (2005) embodies the turning point of Peter Jackson’s career. Its flaws are the ones that ruined his subsequent films, The Lovely Bones (2009) and the Hobbit trilogy (2012-14): sentimentality, over-reliance on CGI and a running length that disregarded the audience’s patience and bladder capacity.


But its strengths were the strengths of The Lord of the Rings (2001-3): a healthy balance of reverence and humour, likeable heroes with discernible arcs, and the patience to let the sense of scale and awe build naturally. These qualities are especially apparent while watching Kong: Skull Island, because the new film has none of them.



That’s not to say Skull Island is irredeemable – it’s just that director Jordan Vogt-Roberts has rebooted a fantastically over-the-top movie as something even more ridiculous and adolescent. It is to King Kong what The Shallows was to Jaws, and it shares with The Shallows a pleasing, canny approach to dumb creature-feature action.


The plot was written on the rim of a shot glass. It’s 1973, and blustering crackpot John Goodman heads an expedition to the titular island, accompanied by Brie Larson’s photojournalist, Tom Hiddleston’s SAS tracker, and a platoon of soldiers under the command of Samuel L. Jackson’s menacing Colonel. Things go predictably pear-shaped early on, and the scattered team is left to try an escape an island on which a mile-high killer ape is the least of their problems.


Peter Jackson took his time getting to the main location, cranking up the mystery for as long as possible. Vogt-Roberts whisks us off to Skull Island with the breeziness of a cheap travel agent, and spends the rest of his film darting from one scene to another with such hyperactivity that sometimes the film resembles an extended trailer of itself. And whereas Jackson’s Kong (as 'performed’ by Andy Serkis) demonstrated actual emotions in his tender relationship with Naomi Watts, the Kong of Skull Island is a thuggish furry skyscraper that has the most perfunctory of flirtations with Brie Larson.



Larson’s war photographer doesn’t quite have the depth to be called two-dimensional: she’s an invisible singularity of a character, impossible to remember even while on-screen. It’s almost a relief that she’s not made to have any kind romance with Tom Hiddleston’s tracker. It would be creepy, like watching lizards mate.


Hiddleston himself doesn’t act in Skull Island – he politely condescends to appear in it, as amused as anyone that he’s been cast as a rugged ex-military type. He looks like he could track down, at most, a nice blazer in Hackett.


Character and plot are all entirely by-the-by, of course, an excuse for the good stuff: the battles, skirmishes, devourings and environment-wrecking smash-ups. Maybe you have to see a film that gets this stuff painfully wrong to really appreciate the ways Skull Island gets it right. Vogt-Roberts is known for his comedy, and the set-pieces have a kind of absurd visual wit, a sense of cruel irony in the stickiest ends. It’s a shame your 3D glasses won’t hide your guilty smirk.


Many people will find this film as tedious as other mega-budget, franchise-bound, special-effects blockbusters, but for connoisseurs of such films – you know who you are – this beast provides a feast.


What Kong: Skull Island film review
Where Various Locations | MAP
Nearest tube Leicester Square (underground)
When 09 Mar 17 – 09 May 17, Times vary
Price £determined by cinema
Website Click here for more details



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 27–29 January
Things to do in London this weekend: 27–29 January
Culture After Dark: The Best Museum Late Night Openings
Culture After Dark: the best museum late-night openings
London Theatre Guide: best plays on now in London (Photograph: Peter Lewicki)
London Theatre Guide: best plays on now in London, 2023

Editor's Picks

Our feminist hopes and fears: Beauty and the Beast
Our feminist hopes and fears: Beauty and the Beast
Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) – Logan UK release date
4 legitimate questions you have about the new Wolverine film
Michelle Williams in The Fabelmans (Photo: eOne)
In cinemas this weekend: Steven Spielberg and Nan Goldin tell their creative truths
Moonlight, La La Land? Oscars results 2017, Warren Beatty, Jimmy Kimmel
Let's dissect that massive Oscars screw-up
Things to do in London: March edition
Things to do in London: March edition
Lily Gladstone, Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams – Certain Women review, Kelly Reichardt film
Certain Women film review
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

Cinema

Fantasy

Action

Tom Hiddleston

Brie Larson

You might like

  • Logan: review X-Men film 2017

    Logan film review ★★★★★

  • Alien: Covenant film review

    Alien: Covenant film review ★★★★★

  • New Mark Wahlberg movie Patriots Day 2017

    Patriots Day film review ★★★★★

  • Matt Damon - The Great Wall film 2017

    The Great Wall film review ★★★★★

  • Hidden Figures cast – Janelle Monáe, Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer

    Hidden Figures film review ★★★★★

  • Matthew Mcconaughey in Gold, 2017 film

    Gold film review ★★★★★



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×