some_empty_friend

If there ever were a film to hop around aimlessly from one plot point to another, "With Your Permission" is it. One should be aware that the film's tagline becomes obsolete within forty minutes of the film. After that, it's impossible to tell where the story trails off to, and more importantly why. The "where" is merely unsatisfactory. And the "why" is never answered.

What results is a series of plot lines strung around our anti-hero, Jan, and his unpredictable wife, Brente. Each plot line carries little depth; the crust of the story is baked, but there's a nice gooey middle. Characters are introduced without purpose. When the last shot cuts to the final credits, I couldn't help but wonder what I watched; what was the purpose of the film, the point, the thesis? Why did I spend 95 minutes watching a film that was supposed to be about a man who is beaten by his wife and maybe for once he'd do something about it, when in fact, that is only a small part of the story?

The one merit of this film is its execution. It was well-done, well-acted, and it looked great. Nothing too fancy with the camera, but the story didn't call for it. And though I don't speak Swedish, it still succeeded in being a humorous film.

The main fault is a weak script. There's just not much to it, but there's plenty potential for a story that could've transcended what it is.

The ideas and questions of kidnapping and ethics presented in this film have great potential, but it folds under a weak script. At many points in the film, especially at the end, Afflec interrupts these points with things not as relevant to the story.

What are we supposed to walk away with after watching this film? For the majority of its duration, I thought it would be something significant as the story was heading in that direction, but I was ultimately let down.

Story flaws aside, the dialogue is quite atrocious and the acting did nothing to help this. Afflec's inexperience shows itself most abundantly here.

The overall style comes off rather trite and exaggerated as well:

The music is too melodramatic

The Boston heritage is overdone

The voice-overs don't complement the story (the narrative voice-overs are unnecessary and the transition voice-overs are excessive)

And finally, the characters are uninteresting. With the exception of the little girl, I don't care about any of them. Deaths happen frequently, but I feel no emotion when someone hits the bucket. Rather than being characters with wills and souls of their own, they are players in a pre-destined plot. Morgan Freeman gives an excellent performance as usual, but this is the first film I've seen him in where I am apathetic to his fate and purpose. This is an important, powerful, and moving story. Unfortunately, the film doesn't share these qualities..

Although the plot is interesting, it is hardly enough to fill three hours and it doesn't. Jackson decides to drag on the majority of the action sequences ten minutes longer than they should be. Instead of trying to add more to the story, the writers seemed to have left it up to Jackson to do the entertaining with CGI effects, which are just too much.

Nearly everything in the film except the actors is CGI. Like Episode 3, the film looks like a video game. This over-abundance of special effects is, ladies and gentlemen, the end of cinema. too many movies are adopting this high-paced, digital-image editing. There's little story left after this.

The dialogue is terrible. The basic story, although interesting, just isn't supported enough throughout the film, and is replaced by drawn-out action sequences, resulting in plot holes that are too ridiculous (come on, how do they get a giant ape on the ship? Not gonna happen with the resources they have). The one saving grace is the acting, which is surprisingly decent across the board.

In a nut-shell, King Kong is bad writing attempting to be cloaked by a tedious amount of green-screen imagery.

Peter Jackson, please return to your roots - Dead Alive, Bad Taste, etc. Stick to the story instead of your computer.