THE PLANET OF THE APES  *

Reviewed 7/27/01

Tim Burton’s PLANET OF THE APES actually made me wish that Oliver Stone, who was originally set to direct, had made this movie, and that Arnold Schwarzenegger had been cast instead of Mark Wahlberg.   It is that bad.  PLANET OF THE APES manages to tie PEARL HARBOR for the dullest characters of the film year and miraculously beats A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE for the worst ending. 

Narrative pace and cohesion has never been Burton’s forte and in comparison, Franklin J. Schaffner’s original PLANET OF THE APES is a masterpiece of tight structural storytelling.  As before, an astronaut crash-lands onto a rather primitive world ruled by apes and where the humans are their slaves.  The supposedly sophisticated Captain Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) encounters the most human-sympathetic ape on the planet in the form of Ari (Helena Bonham Carter).  Ari is like a deranged PETA member, except for people.  She also sports a bad mascara and lipstick job.  Additionally, Leo is followed around by human escapee Daena (model Estella Warren).  Somehow despite Daena’s always perfectly stylish cavewoman look, Leo hardly bats an eyelash, instead focusing more on the cosmetically-challenged Ari.  Along with comic relief slave trader Limbo (Paul Giamatti), they are pursued by the human-hating General Thad (Tim Roth) and his second, Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan).

At the film’s best, all of this almost gets exciting.  Burton however substitutes any sense of drama with in-jokes for fans of the original film.  Burton needs to either play the whole thing for laughs or play it straight.  As usual, trying to do both, he is successful at neither.  All the sets look like, well, sets – with fake tropical plants and superimposed matte paintings.  Aside from costuming and the occasional shot of large armies gathering, this $100 million movie looks like YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE.  Even worse it feels like YOR.

The one element of the film not skimped on was apparently the salary of veteran Rick Baker’s makeup department.  Baker has already had a lot of ape makeup practice with work on MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, GORILLAS IN THE MIST, GREYSTOKE, and the 1976 KING KONG.  Kudos also go to Colleen Atwood’s costumes.  Estella Warren even looks fashionable in her loincloth.  It is no surprise look supercedes content in a Burton film.   Bathroom graffiti is more inspiring than any of the dialogue found in this movie.  When Leo must give a Saint Crispin’s Day style speech for the humans before a battle with the apes, it is as awful as the Shakespeare is great.

Watching Burton’s films, I often gets the sense that he is just amusing himself.  He is certainly much better at that than amusing his audience.  Burton makes some odd choices here.  He only frames Tim Roth one way, with his eyes piercing out from beneath lowered brow.  One would think Burton is taking Stanley Kubrick’s death kind of hard with this obsession with one of Kubrick’s favorite shots.  Charlton Heston makes a cameo as an ape with a not-quite-pro NRA message.

The only PLANET OF THE APES tribute anyone would ever want to see again after this is the SIMPSONS episode with the APES musical.  Quoting Troy McClure, Burton has finally made a monkey out of this viewer by making me sit through this awful mess.