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100Here is the jaw-dropping, eye-popping, heart-stopping movie epic we've been waiting for all year.
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100A magnificent entertainment. It is like the flowering of all the possibilities in the original classic film.
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100What a movie! This is how the medium seduced us originally.
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100Break out the popcorn and prepare to be blown away. King Kong is the most pulse- pounding and heart-stirring romantic adventure since "Titanic."
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100But overall, Jackson goes for the magic by sidestepping every error of judgment and failure of imagination that brought the ponderous 1976 remake thudding to Earth before Kong ever did. He delivers three solid hours of breathless, enchanting entertainment.
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100Unlike its newly trim director, Kong does boast some flab around the middle but by the final reel there’s little doubt that what could have been Jackson’s folly is a triumph, the kind of romantic action spectacle that makes the big screen silver and provides box-office gold. Puts the prime in primate.
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100One of the wonders of the holiday season.
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100Not only does it recapture -- and enhance -- the subtle emotional core that has made the film so beloved for the past three-quarters of a century, it delivers the most eye-boggling, hair-raising movie thrill ride since 1993's "Jurassic Park."
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100The rapport between Ms. Watts and Mr. Serkis is extraordinary, even though it is mediated by fur, latex, optical illusions and complicated effects. Mr. Serkis, who also played Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" movies, is redefining screen acting for the digital age, while Ms. Watts incarnates the glamour and emotional directness of classical Hollywood.
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100Jackson's big monkey picture show is certainly the best popular entertainment of the year. The film is a wondrous blend of then and now: It honors its mythic predecessor of 1933 while using sophisticated movie technology to seamlessly manipulate the fantastic.
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90The gorilla is great, the girl terrific, sets are out of this world, creatures icky as hell, and the director clearly does not believe in the word "enough."
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90Here is a movie that celebrates the heyday of adventure cinema even as it embraces technology's bleeding edge. And I'm willing to forgive a lot when giant gorillas and tyrannosaurs are involved. Must be the art snob in me.
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90After a start heavy on exposition, the film strings one action setpiece after another, each realized with the breathless excitement of an adventure pulp cover. It's as if Jackson set out to bring to life every fantasy of the last moment before earth gave way to space as the site of the final frontier.
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90King Kong is an homage not just to the original but to the history of movies themselves.
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90A surprisingly tender, even heartbreaking, film. Like the original, it's a tragic tale of beauty and the beast.
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90A spectacular three-hankie tragic love story--sometimes dumb and often clunky and always pretty cornball, but just about irresistible.
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90Almost too much of a good thing, Peter Jackson's remake of the film that made him want to make movies is a super-sized version of a yarn that was big to begin with, a stupendous adventure that maximizes, and sometimes oversells, its dazzling wares.
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89A sweet-natured romantic fable, albeit one that packs in carnivorous cockroaches, rampaging brontosaurs, and the ever-Freudian Empire State Building among its requisite emotional baggage. And, too, it's a corker of an action/monster movie.
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The new Kong is just different enough to be terrific screen company. His relationship with his leading lady, played with heart and panache by Naomi Watts, doesn't feel like an old story retold. It feels like a brand new story.
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88The $200 million result is an irresistibly entertaining, if grandiose, saga of doomed love and directorial hubris.
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88Jackson is a visionary filmmaker who is not only a technical wizard but also a master storyteller. With Jackson at the helm, you would expect dazzling special effects and epic action sequences, but what is most surprising is how heartfelt the romance feels.
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88The best of the trio of human performers is Naomi Watts. She also has the most difficult job - not only is the role physical, but it requires her to play off something that isn't there.
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83The scenes between Kong and Ann are much more than a goof: They're the soul of the movie.
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83Kong is brilliant in many, many places. But it overwhelms its own best qualities with its sheer, punishing size. It is, literally, too much of a good thing.
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83When it comes to what's great about King Kong, it's not the harum-scarum. It's the girl.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 381 out of 606
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Mixed: 52 out of 606
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Negative: 173 out of 606
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10
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FrancoN.3Like the big ape himself, this movie was bloated and flabby. They could have at least cut 45 minutes out of it.
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8