Long Live the King (2016)
*** 1/2 (out of 4)
Highly-entertaining documentary that takes a look at the mighty character King Kong and the various times that he has been on the screen. Joe Dante, Bob Burns, Greg Nicotero, Doug Jones, Felissa Rose and Emma Jacobs are just a few of the faces here who discuss how they discovered the ape and what impact that had on their lives.
At just 66-minutes there's certainly not a lot of detail to this documentary but at the same time if you're a fan of the character and the various films then there's no question that you're going to love this. The majority of the running time is devoted to the original film and we hear stories from the people on how they discovered the movie. The majority of them saw it on television and they talk about how it was binge watched and especially around Thanksgiving. From here we get into SON OF KONG, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, KING KONG VS GODZILLA, KING KONG ESCAPE, the 1976 version, KING KONG LIVES and finally the Peter Jackson film.
If you grew up watching KING KONG as a child I think you're really going to love the early stories because everyone interviewed are obviously very happy and often times excited and emotional as they talk about gathering around their television as children to watch the monster double-features. There are some wonderful stories told about having to catch movies when there wasn't a VCR to record them. If you missed them you missed it for who knows how long.
There's a lot of really good stuff here but I must say that I found the over-whelming love of the Jackson film to be somewhat questionable. It seems a lot of people have turned sour on the film yet there's not really anything negative said here about it but I can assure you both KING KONG ESCAPES and KING KONG LIVES take a beating.
If you're a fan of the character then this here is certainly a fun time.
