Vivid 'Apes'

By Malcolm Johnson

From The Hartford Courant, 07.27.2001

The team behind "Planet of the Apes" emphasizes that this is not a remake, and the most admirable aspect of Tim Burton's exciting, witty and inventive action epic arises from how it plays with its predecessors.

Consider the famous line from Rod Serling's screenplay for Franklin J. Schaffner's 1968 adaptation of the novel by Pierre Boulle: "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape." As revised by William Broyles Jr., Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, it now becomes: "Get your stinking hands off me , you damn dirty human." Charlton Heston, who spat out the first line, now becomes a sage, angry dying ape, the father of the chimpanzee archvillain.

Burton even plays brilliant variations on the unforgettable image of a ruined Statue of Liberty, first in the strange wreckage that the escapees from the apes encounter in the desert world, then again at the chilling climax. That trick cannot be revealed here, but it sets up a sure-fire sequel, like the final moment of an old serial.

The experience of seeing the 1968 "Planet of the Apes" for the first time can never be topped, but Burton and his writers have gone beyond the first film by insinuating touches from other films -- science fiction and other genres, too. The new "Planet" begins as a variation on "2001: A Space Odyssey," also released in 1968.

With a touch of the man-and-chimp relationship in "Project X" with Matthew Broderick, Burton opens with a shot of a strange black hand on the controls of a spacecraft. The monkey's paw belongs to Pericles, a chimp trained by Mark Wahlberg's Capt. Leo Davidson, and points to the film's central idea: the connection between men and primates.

It is 2029, but the chimpanzees are being used as they were in early space missions: to go where no man has gone before. Thus Pericles zooms off into the unknown from the space station Oberon. Davidson volunteers first to investigate a troubling shape in space and is rejected because of military rules. But when the chimp and his pod disappear, Davidson disobeys orders and flies out to find his pet. After a "2001" plunge to a strange jungle planet, his perilous adventure begins.

Crashing into a pond, and escaping the pod, Davidson then finds himself in a replay of the 1968 "Planet." Apes, now in embossed Roman armor, round up humans in rags, including principal characters played by Kris Kristofferson and Estella Warren, a ready-made Sheena. The Roman feeling increases with the introduction of Paul Giamatti's orangutan slave trader Limbo, a simian variation on Peter Ustinov's Lentulus in "Spartacus."

Giamatti's comical, pusillanimous Limbo contrasts with the film's mad emperor figure, Tim Roth's terrifyingly vicious and scheming Gen. Thade, who wears the masterpiece of Rick Baker's makeup designs, a diabolical chimp face. Roth also emits piercing shrieks, and his stunt double takes spectacular leaps.

With such an explosive, volatile villain, "Planet of the Apes" evolves into a battle of wills between the fascistic Thade and the liberal humanist Ari of Helena Bonham Carter, looking a bit like Michael Jackson at times in her glamorpuss makeup.

Ari, a clever embodiment of radical chic, takes home Davidson and Warren's Daena after using her wiles on Limbo. Her daddy, David Warner's sage Sen. Sandar, is tossing a dinner party, and Burton and his writers insert a bit of social satire, with Thade, who covets Ari, as the rude guest who humiliates Davidson by prying open his mouth and searching for his soul. Warner's senator opines that "youth is wasted on the young," Roth's Thade snarls that "Extremism in defense of apes is no vice," and it sometimes feels a bit like Will Self's Swiftian novel "Great Apes."

Fed up with the household, Davidson and Daena easily escape their cages, with Ari as their guide.

They also free Daena's father, Kristofferson's Karubi, an adorable little girl adopted by Thade's spoiled niece and the boy Tival, played by Luke Eberl. This sequence, with its farcical romp through ape bedrooms as various simians prepare for bed, plays less amusingly than Burton had hoped.

But with the band of humans and their ape confederates, including Ari's silverback bodyguard Krull, the huge and elegant Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, the runways from Apeville constitute a veritable United Nations of creatures. Giamatti's absurd Limbo is their prisoner and fool.

In hot pursuit are Thade and his enormous second-in-command, Michael Clarke Duncan's rumbling body-crusher Attar.

As it moves from the dark jungle city, designed by Rick Heinricks as a gothic series of cave-like rooms with lots of vines, into sunlit natural terrain, "Planet" becomes a sort of biblical war movie. Its sermon has to do with man's inhumanities to other species, as Leo explains zoos to Ari.

Burton maintains a balance between action sequences and quieter moments, and the visual canvas affords some striking images, with the red tents of Thade's warriors glowing like magic lanterns on the rocky volcanic formations and dark iconic images of armored apes on horseback. The music by Burton's favorite composer, Danny Elfman, cranks up the heat of battle, though the score owes a great debt to the much imitated "Mars" section of Gustav Holst's "The Planets."

But whatever its sources, this return to "Planet of the Apes" proves Burton's most muscular commercial picture since "Batman." And unlike Jack Nicholson's Joker, Roth's Thade is a monster to take very seriously.

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PLANET OF THE APES is directed by Tim Burton and written by William Broyles Jr., Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, based on the novel by Pierre Boulle. Director of photography, Philippe Rousselot. Production design by Rick Heinrichs. Costume design by Colleen Atwood. Edited by Chris Lebenzon. Music by Danny Elfman. Makeup effects designed by Rick Baker. Featuring Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Clarke Duncan, Charlton Heston, Kris Kristofferson, Estella Warren, Paul Giamatti, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, David Warner, Evan Dexter Parke and Luke Eberl. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG-13 for graphic depictions of savage violence and murder and moments that might frighten younger children