The good news is that Kong: Skull Island isn't as bad as I had feared it would be. The bad news is that it isn't as good as it could have been. However you slice it, however, it's an excellent example of how good home video can look and sound in 1080p HD. Warner Brothers' latest take on the giant ape theme comes courtesy of some of the folks who made the last Godzilla remake, so if nothing else it shows they have a history of remaking "classics" for better or worse. Yet this Kong has very little to do with the "Kings Kong" that preceded it, which was one of the things that had me more than a tad scared going into this review (I thought they'd be painting a moustache onto the Mona Lisa). I love King Kong. I have the 1933 original and Peter Jackson's exquisite remake/homage in my Blu-ray library (both are part of my "desert island disc" collection), and I'm possibly one of the few people who didn't hate most of the 1970's version with Jeff Bridges. The story of King Kong is basically an action-packed thriller leavened liberally with the romance between the big ape (Kong, not Jack Driscoll) and Ann Darrow (Faye Wray and Naomi Watts, respectively) - a Beauty and the Beast-type of classic story. And while Kong was big and ferocious, he wasn't a villain;  he was just a big guy defending his turf, then ripped from his home and plunked down where he didn't belong - kind of like the Ymir in Ray Harryhausen's 20 Million Miles to Earth.

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