Kong: Skull Island (12A)

Verdict: A gigantic disappointment

Rating:

More than eight decades have passed since former Mail war correspondent Edgar Wallace created King Kong, but still the giant ape exerts a fierce grip on the collective imagination.

What a shame, then, that Kong: Skull Island is so feebly plotted and scripted, monkeying around with the story and, in the biggest misjudgment of all, revealing Kong in all his hairy majesty even before the opening credits.

The picture begins on a remote Pacific island with a wartime confrontation between two airmen — one American, the other Japanese — who have parachuted out of their stricken planes.

But, soon, they are distracted from the business of killing each other by the great beast itself, an idiotic move by director Jordan Vogt-Roberts and his band of screenwriters.