loading loading...

King Kong Details

2005 DVD Certificate 12.gif
  • Rated:
  • 60
  • from 80,319 members

It is 1933, and vaudeville actress Ann Darrow (Oscar nominee Naomi Watts) has found herself - like so many other New Yorkers during the Great Depression - without the means to earn a living. Unwilling to compromise and allow herself to sink into a career in burlesque, she considers her limited options while aimlessly wandering .. Read more

Starring Naomi Watts, Adrien Brody, Jack Black, Colin Hanks
Director Peter Jackson
Genres Action/Adventure

loading loading...

King Kong

It is 1933, and vaudeville actress Ann Darrow (Oscar nominee Naomi Watts) has found herself - like so many other New Yorkers during the Great Depression - without the means to earn a living. Unwilling to compromise and allow herself to sink into a career in burlesque, she considers her limited options while aimlessly wandering the streets of Manhattan. When her hunger drives her to unsuccessfully try to steal an apple from a fruit vendor's stall, she is rescued - literally - by filmmaker and multiple hyphenate Carl Denham (Jack Black).

It seems that the entrepreneur-raconteur-adventurer is no stranger to theft, having that day lifted the only existing print of his most recent and unfinished film from under his studio executives' noses when they threatened to pull his completion funds. Carl has until the end of the day to get his crew onboard the Singapore-bound tramp steamer, the S.S. Venture, in hopes of completing his travelogue/action film. With that, the showman is certain he will finally achieve the personal greatness he knows awaits him around the corner - and although the crew believe that corner to be Singapore, Denham actually hopes to find and capture on film the mysterious place of legend: Skull Island.

Unfortunately for Carl, his headlining actress has pulled out of his project, but his search for a size-four leading lady (the costumes have all been made) has, fatefully, led him to Ann. The struggling actress is reluctant to sign on with Denham, until she learns that the up-and-coming, socially relevant playwright Jack Driscoll (Oscar winner Adrien Brody) is penning the screenplay - the fees his friend Carl pays for potboiling adventure are a welcome supplement to Driscoll's nominal income from his stage plays.

With his newly discovered star and coerced screenwriter reluctantly onboard, Denham's 'moving picture ship' heads out of New York Harbor... and toward a destiny that none aboard could possibly foresee...

Starring Naomi Watts, Adrien Brody, Jack Black, Colin Hanks, Kyle Chandler, Thomas Kretschmann, Andy Serkis
Director Peter Jackson
Studio UNIVERSAL PICTURES UK
Run time DVD: 2 hrs 59 mins
Blu-ray: 3 hrs 12 mins
Certificate DVD Certificate 12.gif
Genres Action/Adventure
Language English
Hearing-impaired English
Subtitles Arabic, Icelandic
Released DVD: 10 Apr 2006
Blu-ray: 09 Mar 2009
Production year: 2005
Format DVD
  • Critics' reviews (4) of King Kong

    View all
  • If the Lord of the Rings trilogy represents one of the biggest gambles in the history of cinema, its success gave writer-director Peter Jackson a free hand. He chose to go... read more »

    • Avatar image
    • Tom Charity, 
    • LOVEFiLM
  • Most helpful member's review of King Kong

    View all
  • 44 out of 52 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 4 stars

    It Wasn't the Planes...

    Greenery, and green-screenery, abound in Peter Jackson't latest offering. It's good - great, even - but if it's the best film you've ever seen you need to stay in more.

    I was amazed that after the relatively seamless LotR trilogy, that it was easy to spot some of the joins in the SFX, and the lack of detail in the storyline had me a bit frustrated. The answer to just how they got Kong on that boat all the way back to New York remains a mystery. And towards the end I was a little tired of the CGI-spectacular and wished just get up that damned building so we could get on to the foregone conclusion.

    But despite my above whinges, I actually really enjoyed Kong. Well worth spending 3 hours of your life on, but I'd strongly recommend you try and see it in a cinema with good sound, or at the very least wait for the DVD release to watch it on a rich mate's great big sound system - certainly the pirates from the pub could never do this movie justice.

    • RJTaylor
      • RJTaylor from Manchester
  • Most recent members' review of King Kong

    View all
  • 3 out of 4 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 2 stars

    Monkeys used to be amusing

    After a couple of hours of a crap CGI chimp chasing people you don't care about around a jungle I decided to do the washing up for the missus = bad film.

      • Batistuta from Norwich
  • News and features

    View all
    King Kong

    King Kong

    • system
    • 01 Jan 2000

    If the Lord of the Rings trilogy represents one of the biggest gambles in the history of cinema, its success gave writer-director Peter Jackson a free hand. He chose to go back to a dream project, and remake the movie that had inspired him above all others, the 1933 King Kong. A questionable move, you might think, considering Hollywood’s track record with remakes. But Jackson's love for the original shines through in a movie that not only retains the original’s early 30s setting,... Read more

  • Image gallery

    View all
  • More like this

    View all

Rating breakdown

80,319 Member ratings
  • 100
6,545
  • 90
6,488
  • 80
12,814
  • 70
13,035
  • 60
16,169
  • 50
9,141
  • 40
7,015
  • 30
3,952
  • 20
3,435
  • 10
1,725

Related user collection

THE GREATEST ACTION MOVIES EVER MADE !!!!!! (184)

Average rating: 3.61   72.2% from 309 members

by: A customer from Cardiff

Buy from the LOVEFiLM shop


    • King Kong - BLU-RAY Version
    • Blu-Ray: £12.53
      Free Delivery
    • RRP £19.79 (you save: 37%)
    • KING KONG is director Peter Jackson's sprawling, epic remake of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's 1933 movie of the same name, and it sees a film crew travel to the mysterious Skull Island, ...

    • King Kong
      It is 1933, and vaudeville actress Ann Darrow (Oscar nominee Naomi Watts) has found herself - like so many other New Yorkers during the Great Depression - without the means to earn a living. Unwilling to compromise and allow herself to sink into a career in burlesque, she considers her limited ...