Planet of the Apes

When I originally saw the commercial for Planet of the Apes, my mouth f'n hit the floor. I couldn't wait to see what the great Director Tim Burton had in store for the Planet of the Ape remake. That was until recently, when I heard of the reshoots and score reworking that did or did not happen. Tack on to that the commercial scene of an ape saying "Can't we all just get along" and you find a way to piss vigilante off very quickly. Needless to say, when I finally arrived in the theater to see this movie...my feelings were less than stellar. After seeing this movie, thats the best way to go in.

In PoA, Mark "Don't call me Markie" Wahlberg stars as captain Leo Davidson who's ship has been thrust into space..leaving him stranded on an island inhabitated and ruled by Apes. These Apes are led by General Thade (Tim Roth) and treat the humans on the planet like we do our animals. Without his knowledge...Leo quickly becomes the humans of the planet's savior and its up to him to find some solution to this war between Apes and Humans.

Ok...first let me start with the good things. RICK BAKER IS A GOD!!!! Simple as that. I'm guessing that when he was born, God said..."You will be the greatest makeup artist ever, and I will call you Rick." Or something to that effect, because the apes in this film are simply marvelous. Each one looks different than the other, and the fact that in this film "unlike the original" the monkey's lips move with their words...giving their character so much more personality...well as much as this film allows.

The other bright spot of this film was Tim Roth. His General Thade was damn near perfect, and quite honestly...his performace made the entire film totally watchable. The ending scene with him is simple done wonderfully.

Now on to the bad. This is by no means a Tim Burton film. It can't be, I will never believe that it is. It has none of the flair that Mr. Burton brings to any of his films. There's no real creative juice behind this film...its just..well, blah. Most of Burton's films are extremely piss poor on the script side, but he more than makes up for it in the deep emersive world he creates & the characters he has as leads. Here, the scripts flaws are clearly evident. "Spaceman crashes, Spaceman runs from Apes, Spaceman is safe." Any and all the messages about society the original had about this film are gone, and make this film to be nothing more than a popcorn film. I love popcorn films like the next person....that is if the film is in somewhat fun.

Let's move on to the actors. Mark Wahlberg...I love the guy. But somewhere along the filming of this movie..he just stop giving a damn. Its like he took a couple of downers, and told Tim...I'm going to walk through the rest of this script. Then Tim said, "Hey, its not much of a script anyway...do what you want." I know Mark can do better than this, its just here...he doesn't even care. As for the rest of the humans...why are they speaking. They didn't in the original, and you only give them 4 to 5 lines here. If you were going to give them voices Tim...you should have at least expounded upon them a little. Instead, they say there three lines....and add a bit of eye candy for the horny boys out there. This factor I can understand somewhat..cause the film is called Planet of the APES....but all but one ape is truly fleshed out.

Last but not least, the ending of this film will bring a chuckle to many of the original film's viewers...but regular watchers will sit there wondering why they just sat through two hours of a movie for "this" to happen. I've seen the original, and though I loved that. I still found myself askking that question.

"Planet of the Apes" isn't a bad movie, its just not terribly good either. I don't hate it, but I hold some very mixed feelings towards it. This, by far, is one of Tim's worst outing as a director. I just wish Mr. Burton would've put more Burton into this film than he did. Perhaps then I could look pass the piss poor script and acting, and fall completely in love with the movie as a whole. Instead, I find myself wanting to enter the Jurassic Park 3 theater again.

Rating: out of four.

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