Let’s get this out of the way: Peter Jackson’s remake of the groundbreaking 1933 classic “King Kong” has embarrassingly bad dialogue, questionable character development, and moments of laugh-out-loud preposterousness. It’s basically “Titanic” for teenage boys. But like that film, it’s a three-hour epic stuffed to the gills with spectacle, emotion, and special effects that will seize you and make you believe the fantasy flickering on screen. This “King Kong” is a lot of movie. It’s hardly ever boring, but you’ll wish for a boring scene here or there just to catch your breath.

Mr. Jackson’s deeply personal opus begins with lingering shots of caged zoo animals and moves on to the human squalor of New York City during the Great Depression. We’re introduced early to our heroine, Ann Darrow, played brilliantly by Naomi Watts, who demonstrates that talent and movie stardom are not always contradictory terms. A vaudevillian, she pines for the legitimate stage, but has fallen on hard times and can hardly afford to eat. Her New York is a filthy, chaotic, unmerciful jungle, and it’s Mr. Jackson’s first great effect: His Depression-era Big Apple is both familiar and alien.

Like any hoofer in that Golden Age of cinema, Ann is scheduled for a brush with destiny. In this case, that means running into flimflam artist and film director Carl Denham, performed with mediocre gusto by a miscast Jack Black. On the run from creditors trying to shut down his film, and with a secret map in hand, he promises stardom to Darrow: a lead role in a film shot on a rusted old boat bound for a mysterious shooting location.

While on board, we meet the third most important character in the movie, captive playwright Jack Driscoll, played by the buff Adrien Brody, whose heroic gait and six-pack abs briefly betray the long accepted body type of his character’s chosen profession. He’s an unlikely hero, but the lanky, soulful Mr. Brody seems to have a ball saving the girl, machine-gunning velociraptors, and dangling off the leg of a giant flapping bat.

“King Kong” takes its sweet time getting to the aptly named Skull Island (perhaps if it had been named Gumdrop Island, adventurers wouldn’t be so insistent on finding it.) Young children might be bored by the slow buildup, but there’s not much fat to cut; I found myself thoroughly entertained by the goings-on of the salty crew and our heroes. And once these hapless adventurers finally meet the rocky crags of their hard-to-find destination, the action is relentless.

The next two hours are nonstop motion, drama, action, and horror. We encounter terrifying natives whose terror and savagery tells the tale of humans pushed to the brink of insanity in order to survive. A brontosaurus stampede – a sort of dinosaur Nascar – left me slackjawed. Mr. Jackson harks back to his shlocky horror movie roots and gives us a truly unnerving, nightmare-inducing showdown between the crew and a chasm full of giant insects.

And of course, there’s Kong himself, and once the big guy shows up, he’s an impossible act to top – the most compelling character in the movie, and rightfully so. The royal rumble between Kong and a trio of T-Rexes, which he conducts while clutching his prize blonde in one mitt, is simply ridiculous as it endlessly crescendos from climax to climax – ridiculous, and applause-worthy. It’s as if Mr. Jackson were saying: “Top this, ‘Jurassic Park.'”

The original “Kong” was one of those era-defining cultural events that future anthropologists will labor over in an effort to understand our time. One of Hollywood’s first blockbusters, it was a wholly original combination of imaginative storytelling, human actors, and special effects – and unlike previous spectacles employing visual tricks, the stop-action Kong had life breathed into by the masterful Willis O’Brien.

The 18-inch-tall Kong wasn’t merely an optical illusion, but one of the great sleight-of-hand tricks in all of film – even today, the wide-eyed black-and-white Kong communicates panic and curiosity that transcends its wires and clay. Mr. Jackson is very aware of the fact that special effects never look real, even cutting-edge computer graphics. It’s the puppeteer that turns, say, a length of felt and two ping-pong balls into a living character.

But Mr. Jackson is one of cinema’s great puppeteers, as he proved in his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. He combines the best of Spielberg and David Lean, an exacting technocrat whose perfectionism is only matched by his humanity. His version of the famous giant monkey is a stunning creation, and once we are witness to Kong, he is sorely missed every nanosecond he’s not on screen, kicking dinosaur butt or grinding our hearts to powder. This oversize gorilla is as flesh-and-blood as Yoda, or E.T., or Mickey Mouse.

It should be noted that Andy Serkis, who brought Gollum to creepy life in the “Rings” films and who plays an amusing cook in this movie, is the very human heart who plays Kong. He briefly got film dorks to bang their drums and demand that his performance as the slithery villain of “The Two Towers” and “Return of the King” be rewarded with an Oscar nomination. They had a point: His ability to project emotion through movement alone is remarkable; he’s a true, underrated acting pioneer.

We all know where this movie is going, and while some people bemoan the boring, unoriginal monster known as the Hollywood remake, this “Kong” plays like a superb revival of “Hamlet.” You know the towering primate is going to take the express elevator down from the Empire State Building, but it’s still upsetting when it happens. The demise of Kong, killer of dinosaurs, at the hands of man’s cold, violent civilization is as tragic as ever.

And unlike the first “Kong,” this new one never suggests that the blond, eternally shrieking Darrow is the hapless victim of a monster’s whim. Instead, we’re given a heroine whose empathy overwhelms her. She understands she wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for the mercy of the savage monster, the hulking force of nature whose solitude and abuse was so absolute it took a kind, beautiful soul to damn it to its terrible fate.