Review of Kong: Skull Island (2017) by Donelson — 17 Mar 2017

This abortion of a movie should never have seen the light of day. With a credits list of OVER 1,300 people, you think someone would have put their hand up and said "Umm... Wait a minute".

This is supposed to be 1974, but apparently no one bothered to check any actual history. Even the props are more modern, with an office full of DEC-VT100 display terminals from 1978 and later. Many other items in this movie are clearly more modern than they should be. Totally lazy for such an expensive project.

I guess if you cast Samuel L. Jackson into anything these days, it must pass his "cartoon silliness test" to be produced. Tarantino can get away with this with great dialog and action. The clowns producing this hairball should hide their faces in public.

You can tell from the very beginning that this is going to be bad. Even if you, as did I, go into it expecting very little. The setup of the movie is long and face-slapping cliché. The actors, whom we know to be quite skilled, are entirely wasted by bad bad bad dialogue and bad direction. The editing is not so good either.

And when we get out onto the ocean (1974 remember), we are insulted by Hollywood physics and meteorology. A huge storm doesn’t even churn up the waves near the ship *facepalm*.

Of course, the dorks then fly their non-vintage helicopters into the hellstorm, with super-fake lightning all around, and get through to see the beautiful islands.

Within a few minutes, ALL of them have been knocked down by insisting on flying close enough to Kong to get bashed *facepalm* holy crap.

Things only get more clichéd from there, with the grizzly 28 year survivor (with the 20 year old son at the end), the demented Samuel Jackson staring and almost drooling as he chews the scenery.

Vietnam veterans are insulted by their blind obedience to a ranting idiot. Civilians and military alike enter "the valley of death" in spite of the writers allowing some of the characters to suggest it's a bad idea.

And then it gets really bad. "OMG bad".

And in all of this, you feel incredibly bored. It's dull, and bad, and stupid.

Oh, and the "teaser for the idiots' sequel" comes after the 1,300+ lines of credits, if you are not asleep or barfing in the toilet.

The only thing that could save this movie would be cartoon music and a laugh track. Then it would rate a 4/10.

Astoundingly bad.