King Kong

Well, yes and no.

Jackson is undoubtedly a cinematic visionary who more than deserved his armload of Oscars for The Return of the King. The lessons he and his WETA digital effects team learned on Middle-Earth are used to astounding effect here. In the main, the visual effects piss all over anything that Lucasfilm have ever come up with. Three key sequences - Kong versus a gang of bloodthirsty tyrannosaurs, Kong at large in depression-era New York and Kong scaling the Empire State Building - are nothing short of breathtaking, and (in the case of Kong romping through a frozen Central Park) sometimes even beautiful.

Sadly, no matter how inventive Jackson's box of tricks is, he can't disguise the fact that this movie is an overlong, steroid-laced remake of a bank holiday classic that just about everyone's seen already. Nowhere near the triumph that the audacious Rings trilogy was - what could be? - this King Kong is nicely played, entertaining, creatively empty and ultimately rather pointless.

By Andrew Sumner

Rating: 3 / 10

DIRECTED BY Peter Jackson<br>STARRING Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Andy Serkis<br>OPENS DECEMBER 15, Cert 12A, 187 mins