WARNING
THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS.
IF YOU WISH TO AVOID SPOILERS THEN DON'T READ THE BITS WRITTEN IN RED.
OTHER THAN THIS BIT, OBVIOUSLY.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
Tim Burton and I do not get along. As a rule I find his films to be irritating, dull and near enough impossible to sit through. He appears to encourage actors to over act, he seems to be incapable of shooting a film without calling attention to himself and worst of all, despite most of his films costing a fair few bob, they tend to look incredibly cheap.
Now I know enough people who love Tim Burton and his cinematic ginger haired step children to understand that I am in a minority when it comes to the man, but why is it that every Burtonite I speak to feels the need to criticise me for not liking his work? When I watch one of his films he fails to pull me into the world and invest me in his characters EVERY SINGLE TIME. I never give a shit about what's going on. Take Batman for example, I love me some Dark Knight. Batman personifies everything that I love in a character. He's moody, disturbed, fuelled by anger and riddled with negative character traits that when grouped together, should make him an unlikeable fuck-twat. In that film Michael Keaton plays Batman so insanely well that I doubt his portrayal of that character will ever be beaten. So why didn't I give a shit if he defeated the Joker or not? If its not the actor, it has to be the director.
After a lot of thought and numerous attempts to like the mans films I've decided that what I really don't like about Burton is the very thing his fans appear to love about him, namely his 'style'. When I said before that his films look cheap and that his actors have a tendency to over act, that is the because the film is shown through the Tim Burton prism. I've been told it's a form of escapism, a portrayal of a completely different world to our own. A world where, apparently, everything looks like its made out of plastic, everything is either under lit or over lit and everybody lives in a world where everything looks like a miniature model. I'm just not the kind of person who can become invested in a film unless I'm given something to relate to, some relation between my world and the one I'm watching that allows me to buy into what I'm seeing, but hey, whatever, I'm clearly not his intended audience and never will be.
With all of that being said, Tim Burtons remake of Planet Of The Apes looks and acts nothing like a Tim Burton movie. Way to shit all over my opening statement Burton, now I like you even less you greasy, scruffy dick-munch.
The initial question is, what is the difference between the original and the remake? Quite a bit actually. Gone are most of the franchises underlying themes, gone are the hokey, cheesy ape costumes, gone is the sense of mystery and gone is the trademark B-movie aesthetic. Whats been put in their place? Sod all.
The story follows Mark Wahlberg as Leo Davidson, a spaceman with a great love for his monkey (ah, something to relate too!). Leo is all 'la, di, da,' and happy until his monkey is sent to a planet only to get blasted through a swirly whirly thing in space before he completes the trip. Devastated at the idea of never touching his hairy friend again, Leo steals a shuttle and blasts himself into the very same swirly whirly thing in an attempt to try and track his little buddy down.
Leo soon finds himself on a planet ruled by apes (shock, horror) and gets captured. 'No fucking way' I cried as Marky Mark got carted to an ape city from which he must quickly escape so he can get back to the important business at hand.
It feels a little pointless, remaking a modern day classic that got almost everything right in the first place only to remove all the deeper content in exchange for mindless action, but it has made way for the one major addition to the story which wasn't present in the old one. Feminism.
Helena Bonham Carter plays Ari, the only activist in the ape city who just so happens to be a strong female character. It's her character that has all the important revelations, insights and balls to stand up to 'the man'. As feministic undertones go, this isn't so on the nose that it becomes annoying, but it does feel quite out of place. Not to worry too much though, this Planet Of The Apes is loaded to the teeth with copy and paste action sequences occurring every ten to twenty minutes.
The action in Planet Of The Apes is boring. There is plenty of it but its boring. There has been no effort put into trying to make these sequences original or tense in any way, they simply happen in order to cater for the plethora or attention deficit sufferers in the audience. There's one with running, there's one with fire and there's one with fighting, yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn.
The script itself is not a stellar piece of writing. Each scene feels oddly disjointed from the next and the dialogue in some places is laughably atrocious. This isn't helped by the insistence of referencing Hestons greatest one liners on a couple of occasions. If you do wind up watching this film, look out for the lines; 'Take your stinking hands off me you damn dirty human!' and 'Damn them, damn them all to hell!" as particular cringe worthy moments.
The other bug bare for me was the depiction of the apes themselves. It would appear that on this ape planet, the ape community bares a striking resemblance to that of the ancient Romans. While I'm sure this was included as a nod to the multiple Roman empire references contained in the original series, it feels quite out of place here. Id have preferred it if the apes wore nothing at all or maybe simple outfits that an ape could conceivably create. Even if an ape was super intelligent the idea that they could build elaborate Roman style armour feels way too far fetched and in the long run, made them less believable, which is a shame because the filmmakers got everything else about the apes right.
On the up side the cast is kind of fun. Wahlberg, Time Roth, Bonham Carter, Michael Clarke Duncan and Paul Giamatti make up quite an impressive lineup. Each has something new to bring to the table and each serve their characters very well. Roth was menacing and almost scary as the films villainous ape leader, Giamatti was seedy and fun to watch as the films main comedic relief and Wahlberg does his usual job of offering a solid, likeable leading man. One thing I did notice however was that while most of the actors aren't recognisable with their ape makeup applied, Paul Giamatti looks exactly the same in real life as he does a chimp. I doubt I'll ever be able to look at him in the same way again.
Now, lets discuss Tim Burton's direction of the movie. Truth be told, its not actually that bad. With the dropping of Burtons trademark 'style' the film actually feels somewhat more real than any of the directors other offerings. The pacing on the film is very good and the shot composition isn't all that bad either. The film is, all things considered rather dull but I honestly couldn't attribute that to Burtons direction, if I were to helm this film, I'd have done it in very much the same way. In this instance I'm brought to a point of almost tears when I truthfully say that Tim Burton did a decent job with Planet Of The Apes, even if the film is kinda shit.
So what it all boils down to is this. If you want to see Planet Of The Apes, see the 1968 version. Its loads better. The remake is on most counts a failure. Its boring, lifeless, cheesy and an insult on the brain box. But it has a good cast and ok direction.
Planet Of The Apes gets...
1.5 out of 5
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