King Kong - She Just Loves that Ape

Why is Peter Jackson suddenly the new god of movies that are pretty but way too long? True, the Lord of the Rings movies were surprisingly good, but do we really need more movies that are longer than three hours and involve "epic" journeys? I'm not really sure, but if we do, I'm pretty sure this isn't the movie we need.
What Mr. Jackson does is take a really good cast (by which I am mostly referring to Adrien Brody and the still startlingly good Naomi Watts) and put them in the middle of a fairly mediocre movie with lots of action, a giant ape and, yes, dinosaurs. When watching the movie, though, it seemed like Jackson reconciled the good cast/action movie dilemma by alternating scenes that were very slow and involved acting with scenes that mostly consisted of running around in the jungle (or wherever) and not acting. I am not convinced that this worked, or should ever be attempted again.
And then there's the fact that Ms. Watts's relationship with the big monkey is just plain creepy. I mean...yeah. You really think she fell for the giant ape. Which is...I can't really describe it as anything other than creepy. He abducts her, and it's scary. And then he doesn't kill her, and we're happy. And then... they fall in love? I'm not sure if the interspecies romance here was supposed to be some sort of metaphor for something else, but it didn't come across that way.
I think it's a bad indication when my overall lingering thoughts about the movie are 1) man, the shots of New York were beautiful and very well done and 2) why wasn't Naomi Watts more cold walking around in the snow in just a sleeveless dress? It's not that this wasn't an enjoyable movie, it's just that it wasn't that great. I do not think I would subject myself to its 3+ hours again. Unless maybe it was on a plane.