The Apes films went steadily downhill from the initial installment in 1968, but they consistently reflected the radical, anti-establishment politics of the Vietnam/Watergate era and ended on grim notes meant more to unnerve than to entertain as "escapism." The first film still holds up, with terrific makeup, articulate dialogue, mounting paranoia and that final shot worthy of Serling's "Twilight Zone."
Anyone who remakes a film that still feels fresh and complete better have new ideas or unquestionable ability. Director Tim Burton is an acknowledged cinematic visionary of weird, indelible images, but in "revisiting" Planet of the Apes, he brings a thin storyline and an iffy execution.
A sign that its sights are set lower than the original are apparent in the casting. Where Charlton Heston played the marooned astronaut in the first film, here we have Mark Wahlberg. As Leo Davidson, pilot on a 21st-century space station, Wahlberg trains genetically altered chimps to fly into trouble spots. When one intrepid monkey vanishes into an "electromagnetic storm," Leo flies after him and hits one of those pesky holes in the space-time continuum.
In contrast to the incremental building of tension in the first film, Burton's Apes frequently feels rushed. Leo crashes in an earthlike jungle, encounters ragged humans and gets captured by a band of sentient primates in a matter of minutes. Rarely do Wahlberg or the film itself register astonishment at the wild turns of events, and the plot can be sloppy: The humans' escape routes invariably take them through zones crowded with mighty gorilla soldiers, suggesting the dumbest plan conceivable.
Unquestionably the best qualities of the new Apes are the apes themselves, with Rick Baker's makeup proving even more expressive and realistic than in the earlier series. Even better, the simian characters are directed to imitate the body language of actual apes, from the scary way they charge on all fours to gestures of primate social behavior: sniffing, touching, baring teeth and beating chests.
Two especially fine performances can be found beneath the fur and fangs. Tim Roth plays Gen. Thade, an aristocratic but warlike chimpanzee that hates humans and wants to conceal Leo's true origins. He's countered by Helena Bonham Carter's Ari, who pities the plight of enslaved, abused humanity. In another era, she'd be a member of PETA (Primates for the Ethical Treatment of Anthros). Both actors push to emote through their makeup, with Carter proving surprisingly (and rather creepily) flirtatious with Leo, despite their difference in species. A silverback solider (Michael Clarke Duncan) provides menace while a slave-trading orangutan (Paul Giamatti) offers comic relief.
The major difference from the original Apes is that here the humans talk, where they were little better than beasts in the first film. Making the humans sentient brings little to the table, making the plot a more conventional the-slaves-are-revolting story, like Spartacus with gorillas in place of Romans. Themes are never subtle in the Apes films, but the script (by William Broyles Jr., Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal) targets racism with the heaviest possible hand, going so far as to evoke "separate but equal" and "can't we all just get along?" catch-phrases. The humans certainly lack equal screen time with the primates and are scarcely fleshed out as characters.
The film builds to a massive battle between an ape army and human rebels, but though the scale is epic, the action scenes aren't always effective at displaying what's going on. And though it's cool the way the apes leap -- they can vault enormous distances and seemingly swoop out of the sky -- frequently they move too much in defiance of gravity.
Planet of the Apes and Tim Burton himself have highly familiar cinematic brand names, and audiences will seek the new film in packs. But it falls short of the standard set by the first film, suggesting that the Apes are defying Darwin by devolving.
