I made very little secret of the fact that I loathed Peter Jackson's King Kong when I saw it a year ago. My frustration with it spawned one of my most popular blog entries I've ever had.

What aggravated me the most was how many popular critics were snookered by the studio hype. The must have sniffed the three-hour running time and took that to mean Important Movie and didn't want to look like idiots, so they celebrated it with great fanfare. Boxofficemojo, by contrast, had what I thought was one of the most honest reviews, with the line "truly, it was bombast that killed the beast."

But EW smooched that ape's keester aplenty, with a review by Lisa Schwarzbaum that slobbered "this colossal Kong wears its jumbo three-hour running time with glee, wit, and affection, ever mindful that it don't mean a CGI thing if it ain't got that emotional swing."

Here we are, twelve months later, and Entertainment Weekly has abandoned its fawning to name the expanded Kong DVD as "THE WORST DVD" of the year. What a contrast. Here's what they said:

"Yeah, just what we wanted: another half-hour of one of the emptiest recent big-budget blockbusters."

Remember this the next time you pay any credence to an Entertainment Weekly review, good or bad. Just wait long enough, and it, like the weather, will change.

ph