The producer Dino De Laurentiis, a loopy genius who knew a thing or two about big-screen great apes, once said of his own 1976 King Kong star, "When the monkey die, people gonna cry." Fortunately, the monkey in Jordan Vogt-Roberts' exhilarating and pleasingly strange fantasy-adventure Kong: Skull Island doesn't suffer the same fate. Instead, this Kong looms large as a protector of the weak and a steward of the natural world. He's the king of all he surveys. As in the original, that's a mysterious, lost-in-time island, one that an ambitious explorer--played by John Goodman, in full wheeling-dealing mode--is hell-bent on exposing to the world. 
 
 Tagging along are valiant combat photographer Mason Weaver (Brie Larson , radiant in that 1970s Bonne Bell no-makeup way) and studly-but-elegant soldier of fortune James Conrad (played by studly-but-elegant Tom Hiddleston ). There's also a military escort, led by an army officer spoiling for a fight, played by Samuel L. Jackson--it's 1973, in the waning days of the Vietnam conflict, and he's still smarting from the effects of a war that couldn't be won. His bad attitude spells trouble, especially when he crosses a certain beast of distinction. 
 
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 Kong: Skull Island isn't a remake of an earlier King Kong movie, but more of a reimagining. If this Kong has one problem, it's this: there are too many humans. The sprawling ensemble includes a duo of science types (Corey Hawkins and Jing Tian) and a gaggle of soldiers, the most distinctive among them played by Toby Kebbell. (Kebbell portrayed a motion-capture primate in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes --he contributed a few facial expressions to Kong's repertoire in this film, but the character is played chiefly by movement coach Terry Notary.) 
 
 Kong: Skull Island is still great fun, if occasionally in a slightly sadistic way. Some scenes, featuring prehistoric-type critters chomping on humans, may be too intense for really little kids. But for big kids, why not? Vogt-Roberts--who has worked extensively in TV, on shows like You're the Worst and Single Dads --has both a sense of humor and an understanding of what we want from a creature feature. The picture is grand and nutty and visually splendid: Vogt-Roberts knows he's gotta go big or go home, so he treads boldly, even channeling an Apocalypse Now vibe when military choppers whirl, with ill intent, over Kong's tropical paradise. 
 
 Vogt-Roberts knows what to do with actors too. John C. Reilly is wonderful as Hank Marlow, a World War II pilot who's been stranded on the island for years, living contentedly but somewhat forlornly among its natives, a tribe of sober, generous, silent people. (Vogt-Roberts gives them a resplendent entrance: their painted faces and bodies emerge, trompe l'oeil--style, from a formation of similarly decorated rocks.) Marlow is only slightly off his rocker; mostly he's a whiskery, mellow charmer. When he gets a gander at pretty photographer Mason, he tells her, solemnly, "You are more beautiful than a hot dog and a can of beer at Wrigley Field on opening day," his eyes glowing like state-fair pinwheels. 
 
 But there can be only one king of Kong: Skull Island , and you already know who that is. This Kong protects the humans of his island--the deserving ones, that is--from its many dangers. Striding through this neverland's lush dream-world foliage, he's the principal dancer in his own primeval ballet, leathery of chest and furry of butt. His brow is broad, flat and noble. His eyes hold both the warmth and sadness of a million suns, or maybe just the memory of the giant banana he may have eaten for breakfast--but no matter what, he's the movie's soulful center. Kong lives. But he still might make you cry. ||||| ‘Kong: Skull Island’ a fun return to the ape’s stomping ground 
 
 We just won’t leave Kong enough alone, will we? 
 
 For some 80 years now, through movie after movie after movie, the giant ape has been minding his own giant ape business on Skull Island. But then some pesky humans show up and try to capture him or tame him or kill him or otherwise mess with him, and the next thing you know the big guy is swatting away aircraft, roaring up a storm and defending his turf while developing a real resentment for the little pests in clothes — with the exception of the occasional sympathetic blonde who catches his eye, of course. 
 
 “Kong: Skull Island” plays like a mash-up of “Apocalypse Now,” “Hamburger Hill,” “Congo,” “Jurassic Park,” even “The African Queen” — with a couple of elements so ridiculous they could have been borrowed from a “Gilligan’s Island” episode. 
 
 It’s wildly entertaining and it has a sense of humor about itself — and it doesn’t hurt when a great big monster movie features an A-list cast including John Goodman, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston and John C. Reilly. They’re all in a really expensive B-movie and it seems like they’re having a heckuva time fighting the good green-screen fight against all manner of lethal creatures on Skull Island. 
 
 Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts and the team of screenwriters set this version of “Kong” in the summer of 1973, just as direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War is coming to end. This isn’t just some arbitrary device; the war and how it affected those who fought it (and those who fought against it) is a constant theme in “Skull Island.” 
 
 The opening half hour or so feels like more like a Vietnam film than a monster movie, with the soundtrack blasting classic rock staples such as “White Rabbit,” “Run Through the Jungle,” “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” and “Paranoid,” as the main characters are introduced and the mission to Skull Island is set in motion. 
 
 John Goodman’s Bill Randa is an old-school secret ops conspiracy theorist near the end of his career. With anti-war protests raging in the streets of the capital, Randa remarks to an associate, “Mark my words, there’ll never be a more screwed-up time in Washington,” and yes, that line is destined to elicit big-time laughs. 
 
 Randa secures funding for a fact-finding mission to the mysterious Skull Island. The team includes a military escort led by Lt. Colonel Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), who is still seething with anger over the U.S. pulling out of Vietnam; Capt. Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), the obligatory former black ops legend now working for himself, and combat photographer Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), who is along for the ride because, hey, we need Brie Larson along for this ride. 
 
 Director Vogt-Roberts, cinematographer Larry Fong and the special-effects wizards produce some remarkable visuals during the arrival at Skull Island, with helicopters swooping in formation, attention-grabbing slow-motion moments, and perfectly timed moments of comedic relief followed by the shocking (and pretty rough for PG-13) violence. It’s great stuff. 
 
 Oddly enough, once we settle in for the Kong part of the movie, “Skull Island” isn’t quite as entertaining or edgy. It turns into a full-fledged monster movie, as the exploration team quickly learns the enormous monkey is just one of the astonishing and deadly creatures inhabiting the island. Relax for a second, and you could be consumed or crushed by a huge spider or a gigantic lizard thingy or a squid the size of a ship — or maybe you’ll be plucked off the ground and torn apart by a flock of prehistoric-looking birds! 
 
 As Col. Packard starts going full Col. Kurtz, obsessed with his mission against all odds and logic, Capt. Conrad and Mason the Photographer and a few others stumble upon one Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly), a World War II pilot from Chicago who has been stranded on Skull Island for nearly 30 years. (“Have the Cubs won the World Series yet?” asks Hank.) 
 
 The stuff with Hank is beyond goofy — but Reilly plays the comic relief role to the hilt, firing off a few terrific one-liners. By that point, “Skull Island” has lost its sense of menace and has gone a little soft, even as a few supporting characters meet some pretty grisly deaths. (As usual, the MPAA’s ratings board is much more forgiving about multiple gruesome killings than language or nudity when it comes to handing out a PG-13.) 
 
 Hiddleston is solid as an old-fashioned, dashing leading man. Larson is wonderful as the plucky Mason. Jackson and Goodman are as reliable as Jackson and Goodman always are, in just about any genre. 
 
 As for King Kong: he might have to look for another address, because for being so mysterious and secretive and elusive, Skull Island sure brings in a lot of nosy tourists. 
 
 ★★★ 
 
 Warner Brothers presents a film directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts and written by Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein and Derek Connolly. Rated PG-13 (for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for brief strong language). Running time: 118 minutes. Opens Friday at local theaters. ||||| Kong: Skull Island is, reportedly, a reboot of the original King Kong from 1933. At the same time, it features a ton of dinosaurs and prehistoric creepy-crawlies in a not-so-subtle nod to Jurassic Park (1993). The presence of helicopters, napalm, psychedelic rock and two characters named Conrad and Marlow mean you might equally consider it a remix of Apocalypse Now (1979) or its source material, Heart of Darkness. I also caught trace elements of Flight of the Phoenix (2004) and Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). The resulting film bears some relation to the menu at my local Chinese restaurant, which lists “soup with sweetcorn,” “soup with noodles” and “soup with egg drop" before reaching—with an air of summary exasperation or exhaustion—“soup with everything.” That’s pretty much what we get here: soup with everything. 
 
 We start in Washington, D.C., where a bearish conspiracy nut (John Goodman, naturally) is petitioning his senator for money to explore an island in the South Pacific with his team of geologists. He is granted the protection of a full Army helicopter squadron, loaded to the gills with napalm and machine guns, led by an irascible lieutenant (Samuel L. Jackson) fresh from the fields of Vietnam. The whole movie is set in 1973, quite possibly because the filmmakers judged it to be the one period so whacked-out on drugs that nobody would raise any objection to the plot. Also along for the ride are a British Special Air Service officer and jungle survival expert (Tom Hiddleston) and a magazine photographer (Brie Larson). “Isn’t this a little small for a Time photographer?” Hiddleston asks her. “How did British special forces get dragged into this?” Larson asks him. When half your characters devote most of their screen time to exploring the motivations of the other half, you know something is amiss. 
 
 How difficult can it be to get people to go to explore an island? But then the film, which was directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts from a script by Dan Gilroy and Max Borenstein, is driven less by curiosity about exploring the great unknown than by an urgent need to have everyone arrive at the threshold of the great unknown, guns drawn, and start blasting. The film begins where most Kong movies end: with the giant ape swatting aircraft from the skies as if they were flies. 
 
 And so the team is stranded, as Goodman puts it, on Skull Island, “a place where myth and science meet.” Or as I came to think of it, the land where backstory goes to die. Everyone has to fight through great thickets of prehistory, and not just the dinosaurs. Equally Jurassic is the wild-eyed, shaggy-bearded pilot (John C. Reilly) whom the team discovers in the jungle, where he’s been lurking since World War II . Then there is Kong himself, orphaned at a young age after giant lizards eat his parents, engaged ever since in a prolonged but unsuccessful battle with his rage issues. What he should really do is book himself a ticket to New York, head for the Upper West Side and find himself a good therapist, but as its title suggests, Kong: Skull Island is as hung up on Kong’s island as on the great ape himself. We get a full flora and fauna report, including ants, spiders, lizards and squid. It’s like a version of Superman that can’t work up the puff to get out of Smallville. 
 
 The original was a fable about American colonialism, as well as a Beauty and the Beast love story about the ultimate romantic martyr, but Larson snatches just one brief, swoony moment with Kong. This is a combat picture, pure and simple, led from the front by Jackson, who glimpses his nemesis through great plumes of fire, clenches his teeth and vows, “This is one war we’re not going to lose.” The visuals have a high ick factor (intestines pulled through mouths, vomited skulls) but sometimes attain a nutty pop grandeur: I loved the sight of Hiddleston wearing a gas mask, using a samurai sword to slice his way through a flock of pterodactyls in a purple haze. Far out. Jimi Hendrix would dig it. 
 
 It’s the usual story: a lopsided mixture of mega-blast effects and a script that hasn't worked out what opposable thumbs are for. “This is beyond us,” says Reilly, stealing every scene in sight with daffy riffs about gods and monsters, like Dennis Hopper’s gadfly photographer in Apocalypse Now. You’d say he was the comic relief, except Kong: Skull Island can’t seem to manage seriousness in the first place. Quit monkeying around.
– A team sets out to explore a mysterious island in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and soon discovers the fist of a massive monkey in Kong: Skull Island. It might be a familiar story, but critics are mostly applauding Jordan Vogt-Roberts' telling. Here's what they’re saying: Richard Roeper calls it a "wildly entertaining" B-movie with an A-list cast. Among its best qualities are "remarkable visuals" and "perfectly timed moments of comedic relief," he writes at the Chicago Sun-Times. For those who want it, there's "shocking violence," too, yet the film also "has a sense of humor about itself," Roeper says. "It's great stuff." For a film that takes inspiration from Apocalypse Now, Kong: Skull Island is "surprisingly fun and fresh," writes Katie Walsh at the Tribune News Service. But though "never boring," it also "never sits still," a fault Walsh blames on too many characters. Samuel L. Jackson's Col. Packard isn't one she'd be willing to lose, though. He's "riveting." Tom Shone was not on the same page. Here's "the usual story: a lopsided mixture of mega-blast effects and a script that hasn't worked out what opposable thumbs are for," he writes at Newsweek. Thank goodness for John C. Reilly "stealing every scene," he adds. "You'd say he was the comic relief, except Kong: Skull Island can't seem to manage seriousness in the first place. Quit monkeying around." Stephanie Zacharek agrees Reilly is "wonderful," but that's not all she has to admire. "Vogt-Roberts knows he's gotta go big or go home, so he treads boldly." The result is a film that's "great fun" as well as "grand and nutty and visually splendid," she writes at Time. The real star, however, is Kong. "He's the movie's soulful center" and might even "make you cry."