Here’s a first installment of Pete’s Movie Reviews, the reviews in which I talk about movies using my own invented scale: How many minutes should have been cut out of this movie?
Pete plays by his own rules. And likes movies where the characters do this too.
Plus, I figured that most scores are pretty arbitrary. It’s a 89%? What does that mean?
Rotten Tomatoes is bullshit. Movie critics don’t know what’s good for ‘em, and regular people who take the time to go on that site and upload their brilliant critiques are obviously fools.
IMDB is just as bad, if not worse. The problem there is that people mostly see movies they think they’ll enjoy. So if you’re not that audience, you’re not going to feel the same way.
Fortunately, I have no real taste. So it’s hard to say I’m biased. My reviews, I’ll admit they’re dumb up top. If you’re making a decision to see a movie based on what I have to say about it, you’re not smart. Really, if you take my word as gospel on anything, you’re not smart. I have bad news, you might not be smart.
I watched Skull Island. Now, let’s be honest, I watched it on the screen about the size of a grandpa’s wallet. Because that’s just how it goes sometimes. But if I’d watched it in the theater, it would’ve been while nicely toasted, so I think it evens out(?)
That’s one of my favorite activities. Have a few drinks, hit the theater, and watch something that I’ve got low expectations for. If you’ve never done it, you should try it. Someone has to keep these Escape Plan movies in scripts and weird prisons.
Skull Island is the story of an island, which is shaped like a skull. Kind of. And King Kong is there. Sometimes. And a bunch of people end up there. For some reason.
The people who end up there:
Toby Kebbell, who plays an American chopper pilot with the worst southern accent I have ever heard. Southerners must be really sick of every idiot sounding like them. The least anyone could do is make the accent sound kind of correct. Also, I guess Kebbell played Kong, lending him some facial expressions. I suspect they were like, “Well, let’s just get someone already in the movie to play Kong because, fuck it, we’re not getting Serkis again. He’s already played enough apes.
Samuel L. Jackson plays the classic role in these types of movies: military guy who basically goes crazy and wants to kill the thing that they definitely shouldn’t kill, impervious to reason, supposedly the best chopper pilot ever to pilot a thing, yet devoid of any sense.
Tom Hiddleston plays a British army type guy who is for some reason a jungle expert. The biggest challenge here was making him look like he’s been in the jungle for a few days. He just looks better the longer he’s in the jungle. Tom Hiddleston looks good greasy, he looks good in a tuxedo, and he looks good in a garbage bag poncho.
Brie Larson plays a war photographer. This role exists because they wanted to shoehorn a lady into a movie that takes place in the 60’s and involves almost exclusively army people. It’s a total waste. You’d think, if you had a character who was a prize-winning photographer, something would happen other than her holding a camera sometimes. Like she would be used in the movie to frame shots, give visual perspective, and so on. Instead, she’s just kind of around for Kong to sort of love. Which is the silliest thing to include in a remake of this sort of thing. How in love would you be with a tiny ape?
John Goodman is wasted as a renegade science man, but not as wasted as Robert Taylor, who has about 5 seconds of screen time as a boat captain. Why would you bother Robert Taylor for that?
There’s an Asian lady and a black man, who are playing the roles of the Asian lady and black man from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. They’re a couple science nerds who have to sack up and help out fighting monsters. It’s just weird that it’s the identical makeup and roles. If I cared about either movie, I’d see which came first.
Then there’s “Army Guys.” A buncha army guys who are mostly there to get smooshed or blowed up. Maybe like 20?
We go to Skull Island because…because. I guess John Goodman thinks something’s on the island. But he doesn’t know what. But, y’know, if there’s an island that nobody hangs out on, there must be SOMETHING there that has value. It’s probably not like just some shit island, right? It’s not like Delaware, a place nobody goes to because there’s nothing there. Sorry, Delaware. On the plus, you’re being compared to Skull Island, which I’m sure has never happened before.
On the plus, we almost immediately discover Kong, and he starts knocking helicopters out of the sky. Which is cool. But then we get a couple hours of walking through the jungle, sort of trying to avoid Kong. I get it, if this was real life, I’d probably stay as far away from an enormous ape as possible. But in a movie? I want to see the ape doing stuff, not a bunch of guys walking through a swamp.
Which brings us to the city, by which I mean it DOESN’T bring us to the city. We never end up going to the city when there’s a giant monster. Which is bullshit. All I wanted to see was Kong climbing some buildings, knocking stuff over. Rampage shit. Walking around in the jungle? Eh.
In the jungle is that you get these big cliffs and lakes and shit, but I don’t really get any sense of scale with that stuff. A building, I have an idea what that is. A cliff? How the hell should I know? I’m not a cliffologist. I’m no Clifford the big red dog. I don’t even like Clif bars. Cliffs? Not for me, thanks.
There are some encounters with other monsters, other creatures, and those are lots of fun. But there are only a few. And the baddie monsters are just kind of boring. Skull head lizard things? They’re basically just dinosaurs, the design is boring, and don’t we want to see Kong fight like a giant snake or a giant kangaroo or some shit? Giant bear? Giant insect? Giant robot?
We have plenty of dinosaurs in movies. We’ve seen that shit. Gimme something else. Like, wouldn’t it make more sense to have the natural enemy of the gorilla? Which is…a little kid entering its habitat and being shot by a zoo worker? By the way, did anyone know that the zoo must employ one dude who is totally prepared to blow a gorilla’s head off? How nuts is that?
Runtime on this one is a merciful 118 minutes, so at least they didn’t go crazy on the length. But it feels a little like the $9.99 of prices where we are tricked into thinking it’s $9 bucks when it’s really $10. Having it 2 minutes under 2 hours makes it “An hour and…” instead of “Two hours,” but it’s by a short margin. Might be bullshit.
I’d reckon they could’ve cut a good 37 minutes out of this one if they’d just decided to have one break in the action instead of multiple humps of action/inaction, plus we could’ve taken care of the part where we convince the government to sponsor a trip to Skull Island in much shorter order. Because really, who gives a fuck about that? That seems like solid montage shit to intersperse with credits or something.
That puts the movie at a new runtime of 81 minutes and a score of 68%.
Does the movie pass? Yeah, I guess. It’s certainly not stellar, but it passed and should be able to get a decent job doing some bullshit somewhere.