Not good, but not totally bad either... (Planet Of The Apes [2001] (DVD))

Member Name:

Product:	Planet Of The Apes [2001] (DVD)
Date:	18/09/01 (4 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some good ideas, Beautiful visuals

Disadvantages: crap story/weak plot, 11 major gaffes, bad casting

I'm a big fan of the original films, especially "Planet of the Apes" and "Return to Planet of the Apes". The television series was pretty good too, with a decent cast list and ongoing storyline.

When I heard that Tim Burton was redoing the film, I started worrying. His recent films haven't been that good, "Sleepy Hollow" was pretty weak though visually beautiful. Tim Burton is a visual director, but his films lack strong plots and approriate casting, as is the case with this remake.

I don't know how easily you could classify it as a "remake" as it is pretty different to the Charlton Heston 60's classic.

It started pretty well, with Mark Walberg as the frustrated astronaut in charge of experimental chimpanzee space flight training. Mark Walberg's last films like "3 Kings" and "Perfect Storm" were good, but in Planet of the Apes his character is flat and uninvolving. He is OK, but there are many actors who could have brought more to this role...but even great actors would have had a hard time with the ropy script.

The script is full of major holes, 11 big gaffes in all. Some of the more noticeable ones?

When Whalberg crashes on the planet, he's in Delta Pod. Yet when the chimp appears at the end of the film (like a god) the chimp is in the same pod!! When Tim Roth's character gets the lazer gun from the chimp at the end of the film, in the next scene it's turned into a silver remington automatic pistol. When Mark Walberg finds the crashed space ship, and fires up the video console, you are told "we have crashed on an uninhabitated planet" but somehow the planet is full of chimps (who came down in the crash ship), gorillas, orangatans, horses, etc. Where did they come from? I also really like the bit where the Ape army is advancing on the humans, and clear as day, you can see jeep tracks in the sand in front of the ship
(but there's not vehicles in the film!). Also, the "twist" at the end of the film makes no sense, as the events of the film take place on an Alien World thousands of years into the future. So how did those events place chimps in charge of Earth back in the past? It makes NO sense!!

Audiences are not stupid. they find holes like these in the plot and it messes up the film. These kind of gaffes might be acceptable on a student budget short film, but not in a multi-million dollar blockbuster. It makes me wonder if chimps wrote the script?

The rest of the film is very simple, it focuses on the escape from Ape City and the journey to the crashed ship. The other actors are buried in ape make-up, which is the strongest point of the film. Visually, it looks stunning and the apes are shown as very prime evil, scary creatures.

It all looks nice, but the plot is weak and full of holes. I came away disappointed, there were several good parts but the good ideas are swamped by the mediocrity of the rest of the film....

It's worth seeing just to have seen it, but don't expect good things. One of the saving graces, and quite ironic, is seeing Charlton Heston as an old dying chimp!!

Summary: