We at NZBC are sure King Kong is another wallet-bulging classic from PJ, but that quaint old notion of journalistic balance seems to go out the window when the papers report on how our cultural exports fare in the wide world. So, to tip the scales back against those who'd love to give this loving remake 10 out of 5 mainly cos they got flown to big old New York, we accentuated some negatives.

The Daily Telegraph says “the film lacks the cohesion and character development needed to make it a totally satisfying experience". But in a no-brainer it predicts a huge hit from this "hokey and clichéd in parts, thrilling and dramatic at other times" film.

Coming Soon thought that Peter Jackson's latest epic "is far from perfect, just as it's far too long". It's more of everything, said Edward Douglas on the site: more laughs, drama, CGI creatures, but it doesn't help to spend the first hour of a movie on a boat trying to develop backstories for everybody. (At least that watery clunker A Perfect Storm did this on land. But did you notice that the black guy was the only one who had no backstory? Hollywood racism!) Brody is miscast, Douglas reckons, and it's got a hokey score.

Mike Jackson on The Cinema Source reckons (at great, great length) that there's a couple of gaping plot holes, which we won't reveal. The mystery island bit is cheesy, he reckons, which sounds both likely and welcome.

An IMDB user, spencercpw, loved it but thought Jack Black's character was more like a caricature of a movie producer (surely a well-known species to the makers?) and that the plausibility of the primate-blonde relationship was strained at times. Good love is so hard to find these days.