I saw it today. This Kong is a pretty decent actioner that raises the bar for special effects.

SPOILERS: Once you get past the interminable, time-destroying initial 45-50 minutes, there's action aplenty, starting with the near-shipwreck as they approach Skull Island. There are quite a few thoughtful and imaginative touches that give you more than your money's worth: the brontosaurus stampede; the initial billets-doux twixt Ann Darrow and Kong when he first gets her back to her lair; Kong's rampage in Times Square (the set has just the right theatrical touch, like the fireworks near the beginning of "Gangs of New York"), and Kong's ass-slide in Central Park. END OF SPOILERS
But too often the film lacks restraint and intelligence. The action sequences go on far, far, FAR too long: how many split second escapes, missed tyrannosaurus nips, getting caught by jungle vines, last-second rescues by the big ape, etc., can you endure before sheer exhaustion sets in? And the constant spinning camerawork during the action scenes (no doubt a device to keep you from focusing on the rather cheaply executed backdrops) are irritating and obvious. Restraint and intelligence enabled "Jurassic Park" to be not only a great specials-film, but a fine drama: Spielberg had the good sense to reserve his most hair-raising scenes for the smallest dinosaurs, not the biggest. Here, big (and long) are everything. And while Ann Darrow's attempts to rescue Kong had their touching (and yes, imaginative) moments, excessive length made them ridiculous (and director Peter Jackson couldn't resist throwing in 15 or 20 more hair-raising escapes for Darrow on the Empire State building alone--ye gods!). And Kong took longer to expire than Violeta, the heroine of Verdi's "La Traviata."
Naomi Watts makes a very appealing Darrow, right up there with Fay Wray. The rest of the cast is better than good, except for Jack Black, who, as director Carl Denham, does so much beady-eyed, gape-mouthed staring that he looks like he's been lobotomized and is just discovering it.

This Kong is about a thousand times better than the 1976 abomination. But so is just about every other movie I've seen since then. While I enjoyed it a lot on the big screen, I doubt that I could sit through it again. It made me appreciate more than ever the genius of the original, whose specials are still truly amazing for the time (and stand up superbly), and which told its story better, more succinctly and more credibly than this one.