Strong Reviews Suggest Kong: Skull Island a Smashing Good Time

We’ve been feeling good about Kong: Skull Island ever since the first teasers and trailers started rolling in. A great ensemble cast set on a rococo primordial island with the largest Kong ever committed to screen? Yeah, we were sold. When Warner Bros. hit us with this wild final trailer, we felt very confident that director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, his crew and his principal cast of Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, John C. Reilly and John Goodman had delivered the goods.

Now some of the reviews are starting to come in, and they reinforced our feeling that the Skull Island team had a great time making this film, and viewers will, too. Let’s take a brief tour of Kong: Review Island (sorry) and see what the critics make of the biggest, baddest ape of all time.

Entertainment Weekly’s Chris Nashawaty writes that “director Jordan Vogt-Roberts and Industrial Light and Magic’s Kong is a CGI showstopper.”

Variety’s Owen Gleiberman calls Skull Island “a rousing and smartly crafted primordial-beastie spectacular. The entire film takes place on Kong’s jungle island home (he doesn’t scale any skyscrapers — in New York or Dubai), and you could say that it’s more action-based and less ambitious than either of the “King Kong” remakes.”

The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy writes that Skull Island is a winning mix of King Kong, The Lost World with “a bracing dash of Apocalypse Now.” “This highly entertaining return of one of the cinema's most enduring giant beasts moves like crazy — the film feels more like 90 minutes than two hours — and achieves an ideal balance between wild action, throwaway humor, genre refreshment and, perhaps most impressively, a nonchalant awareness of its own modest importance in the bigger scheme of things; unlike most modern franchise blockbusters, it doesn't try to pummel you into submission.”

Kong: Skull Island thunders into theaters this Friday, March 10.