King Kong Directed by John Guillermin Starring Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange and Charles Grodin A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Robin Williams guests on "L.A. Doctors"; Rick Schroder goes bad in TV movie Now Showing New video releases for Jan 19 ___________________ Read the book before you rent the movie! Check out the Books in Film section at barnesandnoble.com ___________________ Y E S T E R D A Y The Faculty Reviewed by Charles Taylor It may lack the emotional intensity of old-school horror flicks like "Carrie," but this is still bloody good fun (01/15/99) In Dreams Reviewed by Andrew O'Hehir With echoes of "Silence of the Lambs" and other thrillers, Neil Jordan's often captivating film is less than the sum of its parts (01/15/99) R E C E N T_. M O V I E S Penned in By Paul Sherman Sean Penn talks about the hurly-burly of Hollywood and why, despite his recent spate of great films, he wants to quit acting -- again (01/14/99) "The Thin Red Line" Reviewed by Charles Taylor What was supposed to be Terrence Malick's long-awaited comeback is instead a clichéd, self-indulgent throwback to the '70s (01/08/99) "Affliction" Reviewed by Charles Taylor Nick Nolte sears as a cop trying desperately not to become his father in Paul Schrader's masterful new film (01/08/99) "The Hi-Lo Country" By Charles Taylor Director Stephen Frears' laconic throwback to '70s westerns (01/04/99) Met expectations By Charles Taylor The 10 best movies of 1998 (12/24/98) BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS

-------[ H O M E_.M O V I E S_.B Y_.C H A R L E S_.T A Y L O R ]___ ___foolforlove Dino De Laurentiis' much-maligned "King Kong" improves on the original by making it a comedy of epic sexual frustration. When producer Dino De Laurentiis' $22 million remake of "King Kong" was released at Christmastime in 1976, it set off a torrent of criticism, almost all of it of the "How dare they?" variety: How dare they defile a classic? How dare they replace the 18-inch, rubber-and-fur model of the original with a guy in an ape suit? How dare they make "Kong" funny? The indignation was summed up by David Denby (declaiming in those days from the Boston Phoenix). In a review bearing the unmatchably Denby-esque title "Kong: The Death of an Illusion," he called it "a classic example of a remake without the poetry or soul of its original." If you read that (or any of the other voices in the chorus of outrage) without having seen the original "Kong," you'd probably get the impression that it had been made in a state of purity instead of being what P.T. Barnum might have come up with if he'd had access to a movie studio and lucked on to some amazing visual effects. Some movie fantasies are purified -- as Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" is -- by the unity of the filmmaker's conception and the delicacy of his effects. But the trickery that most special effects movies depend on is rarely innocent. The original "Kong" has never been one of my favorites. The dark fairy-tale atmosphere doesn't compensate for the clunky pacing, hackneyed script and bad acting -- or the movie's general unpleasantness. I never believed that the filmmakers, Merian B. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, cared all that much about getting you on Kong's side. They were just as content to get a reaction by repulsing you (like when Kong gnaws absentmindedly on people he then discards). From "Frankenstein" to "The Elephant Man," the best misunderstood-monster movies allow us to see people's horrified reactions from the creature's point of view. There's scarcely a second in the remake, directed by John Guillermin and written by Lorenzo Semple Jr., when we're not on Kong's side. Semple has reimagined the big guy as a victim of corporate greed, but more importantly, as a fool for love. When Kong looks at his captive bride, the aspiring Hollywood starlet Dwan (Jessica Lange, in her movie debut), she knows what that gleam in his eye means, and both of them know there's not a darn thing he can do about it. This "Kong" is a comic book recapitulation of the war between the sexes that takes feminine coquetry and masculine aggression to absurd extremes, a comedy of epic sexual frustration. Late in the movie, when Kong plucks Dwan out of a Manhattan bar, you wish he could just pull up a stool, order a bourbon and tell the bartender his tale of woe. But he's got a date with destiny at the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and it's there Kong goes from lovesick palooka to gallant romantic hero, sacrificing himself to ensure the safety of the woman he loves. The whole movie is like that, both absurd and absurdly romantic. In the first half, it's the romance of adventure that "King Kong" revels in. The expedition that unwittingly discovers Kong is the brainchild of Fred (a wonderfully villainous Charles Grodin), an oil-company exec (he works for Petrox -- get it?) who's staked his career on finding a big strike on a remote jungle island. When his bet craps out and he gets a gander at Kong, he envisions a corporate symbol that will make Petrox's tiger look like a kitty cat. Jeff Bridges is Jack, the Ivy League paleontologist stowaway opposed to Fred's scheme, and Lange is Dwan, who's rescued from a life raft after the yacht she'd been on had gone down in a storm. Dwan is attracted to Jack (he spotted her raft), but enticed by Fred's promise to make her a star. N E X T_P A G E _| This is one funny ape movie