PLANET OF THE APES

By Clive King

From The Times (London), 12.16.2000

Tinseltown's top bananas are lining up to join Mark Wahlberg, Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Roth on Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. Charlton Heston, who played the astronaut stranded on a world run by sentient simians in the 1968 original, is to switch sides for a small role as a geriatric ape. Kris Kristofferson has also joined the all-star remake, playing a warrior who leads the human resistance into gorilla warfare.

George Clooney, who seems to have become inseparable from Wahlberg, his costar in Three Kings and The Perfect Storm, has agreed to do a cameo. Bad news for fans of the former ER heart-throb, though: like Heston, Clooney will be monkeying around under ape make-up.