by Tim Burton, 2001.
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter, and Estella Warren.
Rating: 5.5/10, 3/10.
Well, this was disappointing. A remake of Planet Of The Apes directed by Tim Burton and starring Mark Wahlberg sounded like the best thing there possibly could ever be. But it wasn’t. Tim Burton, what happened?
I won’t go into detail about the plot, because there wasn’t much of one. Let’s just say it’s pretty different from the original—it’s not really a remake, more of a different movie with the same basic concept. Which is ok, if it’s done well. The thing that bugged me about this movie is that it seemed like they made a quite good movie originally, but it was like ten hours too long, so they decided to get it down to the right length by randomly chopping out scenes. There are about fifty billion subplots that come out of nowhere and go nowhere. For example: there’s a "rebellious youth" who wants to be recognised as an adult, but you only realise that he’s rebellious or wants recognition in one scene, near the end, and that scene is entirely pointless. Wahlberg (who, may I say, added about one and a half to the entertainment rating because of his extreme dreaminess) and Warren (the lead human character aside from Wahlberg) apparently have some sort of romantic relationship, though you wouldn’t know it for most of the movie, and I’d swear they just tacked that bit on at the end because they had a man and a woman in the same movie and it’s apparently illegal for that to happen without there being some sort of love interest. Aside from the incredible vanishing subplots, it seemed that there was a lot of depth (the sort that would have raised the cinematic greatness rating by a whole hell of a lot) that they really meant to put in there, but they just never got around to.
The usually kick-ass Roth sucked, to put it bluntly, as General Thade (the only character whose name I can remember), who is the most extremely one dimensional villain I’ve ever seen in a movie. Shredder from the Ninja Turtles had more character development. Wahlberg, as the Charlton Heston character, also sucked, which is too bad because we all know from Boogie Nights that he really can act very well. Unlike Charlton Heston. I’d say the two were about even in acting talent in their respective roles in their respective Apes movies, though Charlton Heston was at least funny. But he wasn’t dreamy. Warren might have been good, though I doubt it. I can’t be sure because she had exactly nothing to do in most of the movie other than look wide-eyed and vulnerable. Carter, though, was quite good (most of the time) as a kind human-rights activist ape.
The special effects and makeup, at least, were quite astonishing, which surprised me. I’d heard that last-minute special effects work had nearly caused the movie’s release date to be pushed back, so I figured that the special effects would have looked a little like they’d been thrown together at the last minute. Not at all. It’s just the script that seemed last minute. But it’s these special effects that made the movie as entertaining as it was (which wasn’t much, but it was a little).
And just a brief note on the music: I went in fully expecting that, even if the movie was bad, the music at least would be good, because it was by Danny Elfman, the genius who has scored most of Burton’s films, not to mention the fact that he wrote the best TV show theme ever, the one from The Simpsons. However, Elfman was just as off his mark as Burton was, and except for the fairly good opening credit theme music, the actual score sounded like it could have been written by any ol’ inept Hollywood score-er. Oh well.