Dir: Tim Burton
Starring
Mark Whalberg
Helen Bonham Carter
Tim Roth
Michael Clark Duncan
2001
PG-13, 110m
RATING: 6 out of 10
so one must wonder what went wrong with his latest venture, a reworking of the 1968 sci-fi classic, Planet of the Apes. This is Tim Burton-lite, and as easily distinguishable as his prior films are, it's disheartening to see that he clearly gave in to Hollywood blockbuster mentality, as Planet bears no sign of his signature dark style.
Planet of The Apes is loosely based on its predecessor. Mark Whalberg (here a cardboard cut-out action hero) stars as an astronaut who gets sucked into a time warp (?) and finds himself crash landing on a planet and captured by talking apes who have created a society where humans are their servants. He finds a friend in female ape Helen Bonham Carter. The rest of the movie follows our hero Whalberg as he attempts to escape from his captors, in particular a nasty General played by an unrecognizable Tim Roth.
The story is hardly noteworthy. It's merely a clothesline on which to hang a few charged action sequences, grandiose sets, and the human actors eluding their captors. What made the classic so striking was its scenes of the apes treating the humans as livestock. Here, director Tim Burton has instead chosen to eschew characters and rely on the quality of the first film to garner any sort of sympathy for his characters. The only likeable characters are, again, Helen Bonham Carter as an ape who sympathizes with and wants to help the humans, and Paul Giamatti, as a wise-cracking ape who by the end becomes very grating with his one-liners.
The only true innovation in this updated version is the makeup; it's light years ahead of the 1968 version, and the actors disappear behind it, as well as the militarized costumes. The apes look more ferocious, but this is a very poor subsititute for an actual story. Even the action sequences are dumbed down, with bullets and spears flying, there is no blood onscreen whatsoever. Was it the studios who persisted in Burton to not show blood? Sleepy Hollow was a gorefest, but I imagine since this is a huge studio summer blockbuster, all controversial images and language were censored in order to have a more family oriented (money-making) movie.
With all its flaws, Planet of the Apes is made watchable thanks to the amazing makeup and the performances from Roth and Bonham-Carter. Perhaps Tim Burton will push the envelope with his next film, as here his influence seems nonexistent, except for the dark ending bound to leave audiences looking for a total mindless summer film confused.
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