Overall Rating
 Awesome: 14.68%
Worth A Look: 22.18%
Average: 23.55%
Pretty Bad: 23.55%
Total Crap: 16.04%
12 reviews, 221 user ratings
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| Planet of the Apes (2001) |
by Collin Souter
"Bad acting and all, it stays true to the original"
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Rock group U2 has been on tour this year and they brought Charlton Heston with them. At one point in the show, video screens show footage of National Rifle Association President Heston telling reporters his credo for gun ownership: “There are no good guns. There are no bad guns. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a good man is no threat to anyone, except bad people.” The video then cuts to a montage of the horrors that guns have brought to our culture, finally ending with the image of a 4-year old girl finding a gun in her house and holding it as U2 rips into their politically-charged song “Bullet the Blue Sky.” In Tim Burton’s remake of the 1968 Heston classic “Planet of the Apes,” Heston makes a cameo as a dying ape afraid of guns, that which (in his mind) separates humans from apes. Oh, the irony.At least, that would be my interpretation. I’d hate to think they cast Heston in this scene so he could say how evolved humans have become since inventing firearms. Irony has been lacking in our movies these days and I find it refreshing that I’m sitting here lightly pondering a major political issue after just seeing a Hollywood popcorn movie. I probably won’t delve too deep into this, but this may be the fist Hollywood film since “A.I.” where I’ve walked out and actually thought about something. Thanks, Tim. I needed this.
“Planet of the Apes,” a REMAKE, doesn’t deter that much from its source, but it does go a few steps up by taking away the loin cloths and the camp. A somewhat stoic Mark Wahlberg stands in for Charlton Heston, who played the original part of the hero with the subtlety of a Montana madman pointing a double-barrel shotgun at an audience’s head while screaming, “Look at me! Love me! I’m ACTING!!!” Here, you won’t be snickering at Wahlberg saying to a silent female human captive, “Do you…love me? Can you love?” Still, the original played it straight by telling a terrific sci-fi story with allegories on racism and Vietnam, capping it off with Rod Serling’s signature “Twilight Zone”-esque twist ending.
The story (in case you didn’t know) concerns Captain Leo Davidson (Wahlberg), a space traveler who crash lands onto a planet that looks not unlike the forests of Endor from “Return of the Jedi” while looking for an astro-chimp that disappeared into a black hole. The planet’s welcome wagon consists of getting attacked and flogged by aggressive talking apes that use humans as slaves. Leo, the freshest banana in the bunch, meets fellow white human slaves Karubi and Daena (played by Kris Kristofferson and Estella Warren, respectively) and makes an attempt to escape.
One ape, Ari (Helena Bonham Carter) doesn’t want to enslave the humans. She would rather learn from them. This, of course, outrages her former lover and ape leader, Thade, played by Tim Roth. Eventually, Ari helps out Leo and his small band of human escapees, bringing along with them a sleazy slave trader named Limbo (Paul Giamatti). Through their escape, we get to see more of the planet’s desert landscapes, mountains and—this being a Tim Burton film, and all—its scarecrows.
If “Planet” has one department in which it fails, it would be in the acting department (Again, this doesn’t deter that much from the original). Model Estella Warren had me wanting to find the manual from “A.I.” that would cause her to feel an emotion. This blonde, permed and nicely made-up slave girl looked about as downtrodden and roughed-up as a Texas cheerleader on a date with Hugh Hefner in a D.C. Penthouse. Kristofferson fares slightly better, making us forget that we have been watching a movie with Kris Kristofferson (Maybe because nobody has uttered the words "Kris Kristofferson" in over seven years). Wahlberg could conceivably carry a movie as a hero, but he doesn’t quite do it with this movie. He has almost the same emotional range as Warren, but the script doesn’t allow him to do much more. He looks like a hero, walks like a hero and talks like a hero, but he doesn’t quite have the passion for a hero. Better luck next time.
On the other hand, the actors buried beneath multiple layers of ape make-up do phenomenally well. I’ve already heard guys saying, “Not that I’m into that sort of thing, but Helena Bonham Carter looks pretty damn good as a hairy primate,” which kind of makes me wonder about the current state of the evolutionary process. But she does keep us watching and I loved how the writers handled the tension between her and Wahlberg. She seems to be acting as though forgetting she has even a smudge of Revlon on her.
Tim Roth gives just as remarkable a performance, so remarkable that I actually did forget that I saw his name in the opening credits. And Paul Giamatti (“Private Parts,” “Man On The Moon”), one of my favorite supporting actors, gives a wonderful performance as the perpetually shaky, hapless, reluctant slave trader taking part in the revolution. Lately, I’ve been complaining about celebrity voices popping up in animated movies and ruining some of the magic as a result, but here, beneath Baker’s flawless make-up, even though you can’t see the actor you an at least see their craft.
Some have walked out of this movie disappointed in the ending (which I will NOT give away). I myself would have walked out angry if the movie ended any other way. I think most people have forgotten how beautiful a dark ending can be. We have grown so accustomed to the heroes getting the girls, the aliens making it home and the David’s defeating the Goliaths. We have forgotten how wonderfully tragic it can be if the tables turned on our characters and the writers refused to turn them back. Burton and his team have not forgotten.Ironically, the freshest ending to a movie in a while comes from a remake. For those of you who would like your “Planet of the Apes” movie to have a nice, happy ending devoid of any irony, all I gotta say is, “GOD DAAAAAMN,
YOOOOUUUU…GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HEEELLLLLLLL…”
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1897&reviewer=233
originally posted: 07/31/01 23:19:17
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USA
27-Jul-2001 (PG-13)
UK
N/A
Australia
09-Aug-2001 (M)
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