Above everything else it has – SUV-sized bugs, dinosaur stampedes, streets of 1930s New York that are as vividly hustling and bustling as Michigan Avenue today – King Kong exudes an unabashed fondness for the 1933 creature feature it updates. This is the movies’ looniest love story, between a blond bombshell and a giant gorilla, and it only works because it is told with a pure love of the movies themselves. Director Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) is fulfilling a childhood dream here, and he does so with the giddy glee of a kid. His epic pulses with everything the movies need: wonder, humor, terror and romance. With Jack Black, Adrien Brody and Naomi Watts (doing a far better Fay Wray than Jessica Lange).
