Yesterday, I watched Peter Jackson's "King Kong" on DVD with a friend and my daughter, I wasn't impressed. The plot, of course, isn't original, this being the third version of the film that I know of, so I knew roughly what to expect so very little suspense. The writing was good enough and the heroine's acting (Naomi Watts) good but Jack Black was simply awful.

Whilst I am an admirer of the director, Peter Jackson (who after all gave us a truly superb version of "Lord Of The Rings"), it has to be said that it stretched even the rather copious bounds of my suspension of disbelief, it was overlong and could have benefited from another editor to trim it to around 90 minutes which would have made it a far better film. Sound was good, perhaps the best feature of the film, and the effects were spectacular but, while effects help tell a story, they don't make the film and they simply weren’t good enough to save it.

I'm tempted to give it 5 out of 10 and I think I'm being generous; I'm a collector but I wouldn't buy it on DVD because I don't think I'd bother watching it again. In buying the DVD, my main aim had been to support a director I then considered talented... after this film, and the overlong mess he made of "The Hobbit", I have reconsidered.

The most interesting criticism came from my friend who said that the original (and even the 70s John Guillermin/Dino de Laurentis version) Kong was a heroic figure who found himself a nice new play thing (the film's heroine played by Naomi Watts) and who subsequently who went off in search of it to get it back when it was taken from him and battled all odds to do so. In this one the roles appear to have switched and the girl has become heroic, saving Kong. He summed this up in my title comment, "Somebody Broke My Monkey!"