>>418, >>419, >>420 My review - you did ask for detailed! In two parts, because it's too long for this field.
I’m surprised by how disappointed it left me. I was expecting good mindless entertainment, but found it only mindless. And it had the potential to be a lot better.
The trailers showed almost all of the big scenes, and some of the reviews spoiled most of the other surprises. I’m easily scared, and I only really jumped once.
The good parts: many of the set pieces with the monsters, some of the other creatures, beautiful scenery, nice cinematography at some points. Loving close-ups of early 70s tech – rotary phones, portable turntables. And the soundtrack (CCR, etc.)
The worst parts: the plot, the dialogue, and the pacing. The plot premise boiled down to “we have to get from one end of the island to the other in 3 days to catch our ride.” The dialogue was lame, especially the supposedly witty banter between Tom and Brie’s characters. (One line made me snort out loud, but it was so lousy that now I can’t remember it!) And letting the actors improvise wasn’t a good choice; they need to keep their day jobs when it comes to comic interactions…. The pacing was off, to me. Many scenes could have been much richer with just a little more time; and other scenes seemed to have had seconds snipped out that caused minor continuity gaps.
Missed potential: letting the characterizations build so the characters change during the story. To me, they all seemed either stuck where they were at the start of the story, or they changed suddenly for no reason. Sam Jackson was better than I expected, but JVR should have done something to let him turn into Ahab more slowly; as is, that happens almost at the beginning, so SLJ has nowhere to go. John Goodman’s character turns out to have a significant backstory, but we get no hint of the craziness/obsession that it should have caused in the man until he tells the story, and even then it’s mild. And maybe I missed it in between all the action scenes, but Tom/Conrad goes from cynical at the start to “let’s save Kong!” without any transition between the two states.