When it comes to remakes, Hollywood should make it mandatory for their previews to end with a flashing red screen reading "Enter at Your Own Risk."
"Planet of the Apes" is no exception to the shoddy remake rule, and this cinematic stinkbomb is awful enough to destroy one's faith in humanity.
"Apes" even attempts (unsuccessfully) to hide the fact that it's a remake in the opening credits-it claims to be based on the original novel by Pierre Boulle, but the screenplay is no closer to the source text than Burton's erratic "Sleepy Hollow" was to Irving's classic tale.
The plot has been modified slightly from the original. A big, poorly computer animated spaceship is floating through space, training a variety of apes to fly smaller, poorly computer animated spaceships. In an attempt to rescue one of his test pilot chimps from a failed mission, Captain Davidson ("Marky Mark" Wahlbergh) loses control, crash lands on an unexplored planet and finds it inhabited by-get this-intelligent talking apes! Led by General Thade (Tim Roth), the apes have mankind enslaved and show them very little consideration or respect.
Upon arrival, Davidson is captured but soon escapes, leading the oppressed humans to revolt against the brutal apes. He gets help from some humanitarian chimps, including the irritatingly quirky Ari (Helena Bonham Carter).
There are some lame attempts at social and political commentary, which are unfortunate largely because they are made through jokes that aren't funny. Flawed as they are, the original five "Apes" films cuttingly comment on and satirize religion, evolution, Vietnam, racism, slavery, nuclear war, animal welfare, the black power movement and immigration without bogging down their plots too much. This new version attempts to tackle way too many issues and trips itself up as a result.
Wahlbergh is just awful. It's truly painful to watch him attempt to fill Charlton Heston's large shoes. Say what you will about how hammy Heston is; at least he possesses screen presence, something Wahlbergh can't seem to handle. Although Roth and Carter try their hardest, the most that can be said for their performances is that they're not too bad. Kris Kristofferson might have been good if he had gotten more than five minutes of screen time before being haphazardly killed off.
The award for useless performance of the year goes to Estella Warren for a one-note acting job in which her facial expressions range from confused to puzzled. Plus, her climactic kiss with Marky Mark is the most worthless, forced, unemotional, unwarranted screen smooch ever.
In fact, the film's flaws are legion. There are too many things wrong with it to nail in one review, so I'll just sum up the few strengths in order to explain why "Apes" achieves an F+ instead of just an F. Danny Elfman's score is quite good, and Rick Baker did an excellent job with the makeup. That's it.
Film is a collaborative medium, so a film's success or failure should not be attributed to just one person. But for this movie, an exception must be made. It's all Tim Burton's fault. The once gifted director flirted with disaster before with mediocre fare like "Batman Returns" and "Mars Attacks!" He hits rock bottom with this effort, crashing and burning with no redemption in sight.
Even Burton's lesser efforts had a great deal of redeeming qualities, or at least memorable moments. Here Burton offers nada. What's truly criminal about this effort is not that it's cold, poorly written, shoddily acted, inconsistent, uninvolving and boring. All deep flaws, true, but the real crime is that it's visually dull. The shot composition is strictly by-the-book, the set design is merely passable, the editing is sloppy and there are virtually no clever camera movements.
"Apes" is one of those movies where the groans and exasperated sighs of its frustrated audience top the volume of the Dolby stereo surround theater sound.
There's really only one thing that can be said to the people responsible for this pile of monkey dung, and that's Heston's last line from the original "Apes": "Damn you all to hell"
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