King Kong: The Genital Response

I went to the 10:30 a.m. showing of King Kong today, and I think someone could have mentioned before I went that it was three (3) hours long. In the past, I've always sort of known before going to a movie if it was supposed to be exceptionally lengthy, but this time I went in at 10:15 a.m., and walked out at 1:47 p.m. and just stared at my cell phone clock with a bit of incredulity, thinking it still had to be on Arizona time.

The movie itself is great. I won't ruin it for anyone - but it's a good show: lots of action, lots of plot, just lots of movie, and it doesn't feel 3 hours long, which is about the best praise you can give a three hour movie. Some things were a little goofy, and I really think Jack Black was the weakest actor in the whole mix (I know what they were trying to do with his character, I just didn't like it), but overall it just kept pushing you along. The natives on the island were much scarier than the ur-humans in Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson did some very fun things, like keep some of the original (the old version, not the 7o's version) fight scenes intact right down to particular actions by Kong. I think if you watched the old one and the new one side by side, certain computer-animated scenes would play out almost frame by frame alongside the old stop motion scenes.

And...this gives me a chance to share a post I read this week that I really need to share, just so it's not on my plate alone. At the end of the movie, half a dozen women in the audience were crying. No men were crying. They obviously empathized with Kong and the love story. That might imply that men are unfeeling jerks or...it might imply women are more emotionally involved with animals (link after the hop). Yep, women can be aroused by monkey sex. I know that Kong is an ape and not a monkey, like a bonobo, but I'm not sure that's a control issue in the experiment. There was no ape sex - I'm not implying that - Jackson wouldn't go that far - but maybe there's the edge of the experiment at play in this instance. Feel free to discuss.