There are several good reasons to go ape over Peter Jackson's King Kong.
It's a wildly entertaining popcorn movie filled with eye-popping special effects, spectacular adventure sequences and an inter-species love story that actually manages to produce more sighs than snickers.
Fresh from the box office and critical success of his Lord of the Rings trilogy, Jackson was granted carte blanche to revisit one of the classic monster movies of all time.
To Jackson's credit, most of that $200 million US is up there on the screen and not in some actor's bank account.
Jackson's Kong is the giant ape from an island time forgot where he is not the only supersized creature.
There are dinosaurs of all types, mosquitos the size of seagulls and slugs, beetles, cockroaches and spiders so large, they view humans as snacks, not entrees.
It's on this mysterious island that renegade film director Carl Denham (Jack Black) is determined to shoot his newest epic.
He brings along aspiring actor Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), acclaimed playwright-turned-screenwriter Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) and B-movie star Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler).
Carl has a wild imagination, but not even he could have predicted what lies in wait for his film crew and the crew of the ship that gets them there.
It's what happens on Skull Island that makes this King Kong so much fun.
From the grotesque, depraved islanders who guard the entrance to the jungle to the creatures living within, Jackson has created a world to rival Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park films.
And that's just what he's determined to do. He's out to usurp the throne Spielberg once held as king of special-effects action adventure flicks.
As Jackson's humans battle oversized bugs and outrun a stampede of dinosaurs, his Kong literally wrestles with three T-Rex bad guys, who inexplicably want to munch on tiny Ann Darrow, rather than the slow-witted, slow-of-foot creatures that live in abundance in the jungle.
When she realizes Kong is her protector on this island of terrors, Darrow begins to find the big guy endearing -- as will millions of moviegoers around the world.
Jackson's Kong has a heart as big as his hands and he loses it to the blond bombshell from the jungles of New York.
Watching the two of them curl up together on his palatial ledge is so sweet.
Jackson, actor Andy Serkis and an army of computer animators have made this Kong one of the most believable creatures ever brought to the screen.
Watch those eyes, which can be menacing one moment and plaintiff the next and the fur that moves as realistically as Watts' blond locks.
The Skull Island adventure falls between two visits to New York, which are equally dazzling but not nearly as compelling.
Jackson makes Depression-era New York look as real as Kong's jungle, but he gets excessive, especially when Kong escapes as a sideshow attraction and rampages through the streets.
It recalls the excesses of the updated Godzilla, where every sequence is too long, too indulgent and too reliant on mass destruction of buildings and vehicles.
There is a beautifully sweet ice-skating moment in Central Park that references Bambi and some genuinely tender moments atop the Empire State Building, but it all needed to be trimmed.
Watts is remarkable in showing Darrow's love for the monstrous brute, but she is unable to do the same for Brody. There's no chemistry in that parallel romance.
Black is embarrassingly bad.
King Kong is going to be a monster hit because it does what movies are meant to do.
It entertains moviegoers of all ages royally and it does so on the big screen, where it belongs.
(This film is rated PG)
