jake j

SO devoid of smarts and cohesion that it beggars the imagination. Talk about a vanity piece.......the National Narcissism Club placed the entire cast its Hall of Fame. This short torture test to the endurance of the human kidney is long on pith, that-th's for th-yore. People running in horror from the theater screamed "look out, it's going to be screened". Gnats flying in front of the projector filed a class-action suit with the League of Decency. The Director definitely showed Promise. Actually, he displayed an empty tub of buttery-tasting margarine on screen. The pacing on this was so bad I was pining for the 1966 Morey Amsterdam disaster "Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title". An out of focus director's cut of "Gigli" dwarfs this.

I just saw an episode of this 22 min CBC kiddie show dubbed from a mediocre 16mm print to DVD and the enterprise was bizarre, fascinating and strangely touching. The host, portly opera star Alan Crofoot, never appeared on television again after the one-year run of this series, but gained popularity in the UK via reruns of the show in the late 1960's. While preparing for an opera in Dayton Ohio in 1979, Crofoot committed suicide at the age of 49. His powerful tenor voice, badly dubbed on Mr. Piper, was impressive, as was the charming attempt to incorporate incongruous short documentary films of the world's children along with a creaky in=house series of pets with human voices forced to undergo various perils to their obvious disdain. Mr. Piper is an amazing relic that reeks with that chilling early 60's TV feel, replete with faded color. The theme song, when first heard, can never be shaken. As an American, I was delighted to see an episode of this forgotten series that never screened in the USA. RIP Mr. Piper.......

King Kong is actually three distinct films. First the voyage to Skull Island, the endless chaos on the island and the finale in NYC. All of the stunning CGI and art direction cannot compensate for a drawn out and slackly played narrative that actually improved the image of the much-maligned '76 remake. For a work that has consumed director Jackson with passion since he experienced the truly classic original on television as a young boy in New Zealand, this is a dispiriting event. Like the worst of Spielberg, characters are introduced and forgotten, red herrings are tossed about with zero regard for a thinking audience, and the ooh-wow! set pieces, as with Kong versus the T-Rex's and the stampede of the dinosaurs, lose all visceral tension when reason tells us, even for a broad fantasy, that what we are watching is technical proficiency and virtuosity without a shred of believability. And where are the laughs? The only humor comes from the smugness of a deluded matinée idol, Kyle Chandler as Bruce Baxter seen too briefly, and Jack Black is totally wrong and far too feminine to pull off the bravado and guts of adventurer/producer Carl Denham. This is his worst performance. Naomi Watts manages to keep a straight face while playing off the blue screen to Kong, but for those critics who claim these scenes are touching have got to be kidding. Nothing but repressed giggles from the screening I attended. The touted roach-spider attack, coming on the heels of FOUR extended action sequences where our heroes should have died a thousand times, comes straight out of the superior Starship Troopers and provides a perfect description of this obscenely bloated ordeal-OVERKILL!!!!!

Anyone outside of Universal Studios or Peter Jackson's buying power can clearly see this film is, after a promising first hour at sea, an endless noise factory with limited entertainment value. The ENTIRE New York sequence, compared to the original, or even the finale of the budget-less KONGA, is an embarrassment. James Newton Howard, one of our finest composers, phones in a forgettable last-minute score. King BOMB is more appropriate. A complete waste of $207 million bucks (it ain't my money of course)on a vanity production. * 1.2 out of ****