A gold doubloon to the man who first spots the big monkey!

In many ways, you can’t keep a good skyscraper sized monkey down. Apparently it’s been ages since the last King Kong reboot which had Jack Black in the 1930s with a CGI King Kong as opposed to a puppet made of bits that fell of a black toupee. 2005 in fact. Doesn’t time fly when you can’t really remember what happens in a film from the mid 2000s?

Well, it seems that Warner Bros, Legendary Pictures and Tencent Pictures, a Chinese film company (so probably like XXX earlier this year, that’s really where the money comes from) decided to p*ss away the GDP of a small country on what seems to be yet another reboot of the giant ape bloke who likes pretty ladies and has a knack for climbing tall buildings and swatting down planes shooting at him. The film was released generally 10th March in the UK and I had the opportunity to go see it on Tuesday ahead of the release to see what the fuss (if there was any) was about.

This time however, we’re in the 1970s for our epic tale of monster fighting, which along with it, brings one of the best parts of the film, the soundtrack to bear with real guitar riffing goodness and classics to at least keep your feet tapping away while your brain falls asleep. You probably can already tell how the rest of the mini meh is going to go already. Set your brain to B-Movie mode now!

John Goodman along with Corey Hawkins (who took time out from shooting terrorists in the latest series of 24 from what I understand) go and annoy a senator to go on a lovely field trip to Skull Island which is surrounded by dodgy weather all year round and no one knows what’s there. So let’s go there then!

Along the way, they recruit a burned out ex SAS dude played by Tom Hiddleson. He’s annoyed and looking for something of a challenge or money, I don’t know it really doesn’t matter. Brie Larson clearly wanted to pay off her mortgage as she turns up as the woman who will connect with Kong at some point and be fearless etc. She’s the photographer looking for a real story because the Vietnam war just ended and that’s buggered her fun up.

Look everyone, those people are where the budget for the film went to!

And then we come to Captain Ahab, played by Samuel L Jackson, which by far is the most memorable chracter in this entire affair. He’s actually supposed to be a General who has nothing left it seems to do after Vietnam ended. So he accepts a mission along with his men, to escort John Goodman and the rest to Skull Island. They have a bit of bad weather and then come across Kong at which point, it all goes meh and for about 7 years, everything is blowing up, Kong is getting shot etc, and Captain Ahab has his whale to go after.

Various other things occur, some of which you should take my word on, will make you laugh when you’re not supposed to. There’s also the question about how many plots they mashed together here, as Moby Dick was clearly one of them, the old Kong films for sure, and I’m sure there was a hint of the Lost World in there for good measure. The mash-up of the story starts out alright if empty on substance but by the time we get to the island, forget about anything else other than people dying, a lot of explosions and gunfire, and monster fights. Lots of monster fighting.

From what I can tell, the majority of the money must have gone on the cast as you really do have some being names all turning up. A lot of the time however, they were just posing. I’m not even kidding you. You have quite a lot of posing in front of clearly green screened surroundings for the most part and it made the film look blurry at times and even more silly.

Jackson’s motivations were also damned hard to figure out why he really hated Kong on sight. Ok, Kong destroyed and killed people, but they invaded his turf for crying out loud first! The monster fighting with Kong versus the giant lizard thingy was good to be fair, even if there wasn’t really that much of it.

Would I recommend you to see this at the cinema? Actually….no. Just.

It’s a b-movie through and through and in some ways, that excuses it for a lot of the silliness and nonsense that unfolds. I mean, you cannot expect shakespeare in a film about a giant ape fighting underground monster dudes! The cast as cheesy as it was, were doing a decent enough job, and the effects were good for the most part, even if it suffered from blurred CGI at times. The soundtrack as mentioned was pretty damned good though, so kudos for the playlist there.

But there’s other B-Movies I’ve really enjoyed more and I can’t say this will be something which will float everyone’s boat made out of plane parts. I enjoyed parts of it, and it’s not a bad film, it’s just OK. An OK film which could wait for Amazon or Netflix to show it instead of spending cash at the pictures.

Kong Skull Island is out in cinemas now, and here’s a final thought for you all; Godzilla apparently will fight King Kong in the next film due either in 2019 or 2020. OK, that’s got my attention!