It was alright... pretty good actually. I actually didn't mind the first part before Kong showed up... I thought it was pretty interesting. The main problem with the movie is that it's not epic material, but has an epic runtime... which means there's a lot that could have been cut out. Towards the end, especially, the use of slow motion gets really irratating (every sad/touching/dramatic scene is accompanied by a bunch of slow motion and multiple closeups of everyone's face). The movie just isn't tight enough. I think at least half an hour to an hour could have been cut out with no loss. Though I didn't mind knowing it, we really didn't need to know the backstory to all the characters to such depth. But yea... the slow motion/dramatic closeups were probably waaaayyy overused. There were also a lot of scenes where it seemed they were just showing off their digital effects (which, by the way, were excellent). There was like a 10 minute scene of just Kong running and then snorting and waving his hands around... I had absolutely no clue what the hell was going on.

The action scenes were pretty damn awesome, though... the Kong vs dinosaur action was amazing... as was the bug stuff. Kong himself is like a new benchmark for digital effects... he looks damn good. The emotional side of the story works as well, but once again, Jackson relies way too much on dramatic closeups and slow motion... so at the end, when you're supposed to totally sucked into this 'Beauty and the Beat' thing, the slow motion just gets in the way. Every time a new slomo scene came on I just got pissed off/annoyed and couldn't concentrate on the scene. It almost becomes laughable...

Anyway, overall, the movie was good. I definitely wouldn't say 'classic' good, but it was good. I'd give it maybe 3.5/5 stars. It just drags on WAAAY too long. If it had been cut down to size, I think this movie could have been great. I really don't think Jackson is cut out to create a movie of such size... all the LotRs felt too long, as does this movie. He needs to get things a lot tighter... I really hope his next movie is going to go back to his B-horror movie roots. Man, I loved his old movies.

Oh yea... and I don't think those dinos are T-rexes... I've heard them being called V-rexes... some sort of fictionaly dinosaur.