Jungle Land: Director Tim Burton reimagines a classic in Planet of the Apes

By Matt Radz

From The Gazette (Montreal), 07.27.2001 Friday Final Edition

Planet of the Apes

Rating four (four stars)

Playing at the Cavendish, Colossus Laval, Cote des Neiges, Des Sources, Dorval, Kirkland, Lacordaire, LaSalle, Laval 12, Paramount, Pont Viau, Spheretech, StarCite, Taschereau and Versailles cinemas.

Parents' guide: violence.

Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes is a wondrously imagined desert-forest world ruled by an arrogant, powerful and sophisticated but mechanically primitive civilization, not unlike ancient Rome.

The endlessly inventive director doesn't just update the 1968 cult classic that turned time inside out and put humans below apes on evolution's ladder.

Burton was hired to "reimagine" the original intergalactic road-movie that spawned four big-screen sequels and a television series. And he does just that with a return trip to the Planet of the Apes, where man is in chains, hot-branded and enslaved by the fascist chimps and gorillas.

The journey's a stylish big-screen wonder with an ending that trumps the original film's "back to the future" Statue of Liberty finale.

Who better to create a fantastic new world to retell a favourite sci-fi tale than Burton, the whiz kid behind Batman (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990) and last year's Sleepy Hollow.

The director begins by tossing off some of the best space sequences since Stanley Kubrick went way out there.

A time-warping magnetic storm approaches and the spaceship's in great peril. In the Burton version, only one brave time-traveler, Captain Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg in the Charlton Heston space-ace role) makes it to the monkey planet.

After all these years, the big apes in charge still hate and persecute their smelly, powerless humans. Capt. Leo crash-lands in the middle of a pogrom.

As a freedom-loving American, he will lead the mistreated minority to rise up in the just cause of liberty, not only for themselves but for all primates to live in interspecies harmony.

Capt. Leo's allies in the struggle include a human pater familias (Kris Kristofferson), his daughter Daena played by Chanel No. 5 hottie Estella Warren in a Sheena of the Jungle outfit and Ari, Helena Bonham Carter, as a rebel chimp who is a human-rights activist. Ari is also the best-looking ape on the planet and she has her eye on the handsome captain.

Those trying to keep the humans caged and cowed are led by Tim Roth as General Thade, the top gorilla military enforcer.

Thanks to the art of makeup and a six-week course in monkey behaviour, the talking apes appear every bit as realistic as the humans in the cast.

The instinctive behaviour of the two species is well contrasted. The apes can really jump and have an incredible sense of smell; the humans are more introspective, rarely bare their teeth to express emotions and don't lope on all fours, even when excited. Humans have one-quarter of a great ape's strength, but are a lot better at brooding and introspection.

"The humans are the most devious and cruel species in the universe," opines Heston, who has a cameo as a high-ranking monkey. Those are his character's dying words, so it must be true.

Like all great movies, the heart-stopping adventure is leavened with humour. "The last thing you want in your house is a human teenager," a slave-trader cautions a customer haggling for a better family-package deal.

A violent movie despite its "all primates, all good," message of love, Planet of the Apes is Hollywood at its very best - the perfect marriage of awesome big-screen technology and storytelling excitement.