Little More Than Monkey Business

By Steven Mazey

From The Ottawa Citizen, 07.27.2001

Planet of the Apes ***

Playing at: Coliseum, SilverCity, StarCite, World Exchange, Orleans, Cinema 9, South Keys, AMC Kanata

The 1968 original had a chiselled Charlton Heston wearing a loincloth and acting badly -- did he ever do anything else? -- playing an astronaut in the distant future who lands on a strange planet in which primitive human beings incapable of speech are ruled by superior apes who not only speak but have British accents.

Marked by occasional flashes of wit and elaborate makeup that turned actors like Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans into simians, the film was impressive for its time, even if it featured some heavily preachy, Star Trek-style lectures about diversity, racism, man's inhumanity to man and the future of the human race.

Heston grimaced a lot and said things to his fellow astronauts like, "I'm a seeker, too. Somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man."

For one thing, that seeker found a voluptuous female sidekick who had managed to keep her 1960s bouffant miraculously starched and in place. She didn't talk, but she grunted and nodded a lot and batted her eyes alluringly as Heston tried to battle the apes.

Now, for no apparent reason other than to offer a talented director a chance to have some fun and to show just how far special effects have advanced in 33 years, we have a slick new version of Planet of the Apes.

Yes, it looks flashier, and Rick Baker's makeup is more impressive than the 1968 designs. There's more variety in the faces of the simian people this time around -- they look less rubbery, and their mouths move more convincingly when they talk. This is more than can be said for some of the human actors, but more on that later.

Director Tim Burton (Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow) gives the film the richly stylized look for which he's famous, and it's the movie's design that offers the biggest pleasures. Burton got his start in animation, and he's come up with a dense, dark, eerie treehouse-filled forest that looks like an Arthur Rackham fairy tale illustration. The sets are things of beauty, and you can sense the fun that Burton had with them.

You can also see him trying hard in the little bits of comedy that pop up occasionally to lighten the mood -- the ape that grinds a music box while a little boy dances, the gorilla that plays double bass with his feet.

What's disappointing for Burton admirers is that you keep waiting for the movie to offer something more, some reason for being other than an attempt to cash in on the success of the original.

In the film's press notes, the producers insist that this isn't a re-make, it's a "re-imagining." It's not re-imagined enough.

Planet of the Apes isn't as badly miscalculated as Burton's Mars Attacks from a few years ago, but there's little here to admire beyond the design and some of the staging of the action scenes. There's no emotional core.

Give Burton some good writing and some inventive actors and he can soar (Beetlejuice), but here he's saddled with a weak script that's as heavy-handed as the original. He isn't helped by star Mark Wahlberg, who takes over the Heston role, and if anything, is an even less interesting actor.

Wahlberg, the former rap singer, underwear model and graduate of the Gold's Gym Academy of Dramatic Art, is a dim, lunky presence without any of the charisma, emotional range or humour that might have made the film work (you can imagine Harrison Ford, for example, at least keeping things interesting).

Wahlberg's blankness was used well when he was playing the dimwitted hero in Boogie Nights, but it doesn't work when he's supposed to be playing a born leader who inspires downtrodden humans to rebel against cruel ape rulers.

"Our history is filled with men who have done amazing things. Sometimes a few can make a difference," he says, in one of the many bits of dialogue that feel as if they were lifted from bad 1950s Biblical epics.

Wahlberg plays Capt. Leo Davidson, an astronaut who crashes on the ape planet while on a solo mission from his spaceship. He finds himself alone in a land where humans are hunted and kept in cages by apes.

A young kindly female ape named Ari (Helena Bonham Carter) with eyeliner, lipstick, and nicely tousled hair, sees something special in Leo and tries to protect him from the clutches of the evil apes who want to do him harm.

Like the character played by Kim Hunter in the original, she's a sensitive, compassionate type who spells out the film's message and keeps saying things like, "Why can't we all just get along?" From the way she looks at Leo, she also seems to have a bit of a simian crush on him, but she has her work cut out for her, since she has to compete for his affection with the curvaceous Daena (Canada's Estella Warren -- whose acting training includes her experience as a supermodel and synchronized swimming champion). Despite all the time she spends running from apes, Daena has nice blonde highlights and a Julia Roberts perm, and she parades around in a skimpy Wilma Flintstone-style mini-dress.

Even with her face encased in latex, Bonham Carter blows the vacuous Warren off the screen, and provides the film's few flashes of genuine feeling. This may have something to do with the fact Bonham Carter also has a hundred times more talent than the rest of the cast.

The film builds to a climactic battle scene, staged impressively by Burton.

One of the improvements he's come up with is to have the apes capable of projectile leaping that sends them flying effortlessly through the air as they chase the humans.

But if you want to see flying monkeys, rent The Wizard of Oz. You'll have a lot more fun.