Kong: Skull Island

I had a couple of hours free and I needed a warm place to sit, so while travelling in the UK, I stopped in to watch Kong: Skull Island. It was one of those rare times when I watched a film before checking how it was rated b y my favourite critics. Had I checked, I may have passed on this chance to waste my time on this poor excuse of an adventure film.

Kong: Skull island has a lot of things going for it, like the interesting premise of a lost island in the Pacific, which is almost unreachable due to perpetual storm clouds. Then there’s the fascinating group of actors, like John C. Reilly, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson and Tim Hiddleston. These actors almost made the film worth watching, but some of their lines were so cringe-worthy that the operative word remains ‘almost’. And Kong himself was the best thing about the film, rendered very believably and given a unique blend of characteristics and history (better than any of the human actors). And the cinematography was occasionally breathtaking. 

But all the good stuff went to waste as we watch one character after another get killed off by the various ‘monsters’ on Skull Island (sorry for the spoiler, but I’m doing you a favour here). There’s almost nothing original in how the story plays out, making that story not worth telling and not worth watching, especially with all the silly action, which often made so little sense you just want to scream at the characters for their unbelievable stupidity (like: “let’s go rescue a possible survivor even though we don’t know if he’s alive and even though we certainly know that many of us will die if we try it!”). Jackson’s character alone is worth skipping the film.

So Kong: Skull island gets **+ for all those good things, but my mug is down. Don’t waste your time unless you’re a sucker for romantic action adventure films (the way I’m a sucker for musicals).