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BY
DANIEL BAIG | If you're the kind of fan who goes and sees all the
big movies, no matter what, then of course regardless of what I
say here, you're going to see Planet of the Apes. And you
won't have a bad time, because it is by no means a bad movie.
However,
if time and or money are things you have to ration, and thus you
prefer to only spend your time seeing really GOOD stuff, then you
should probably give this new POA a miss. (If you want fun,
mindless thrills, go catch Jurassic Park III if you haven't
already.) Because while there's not much terribly wrong with it,
there is also almost nothing GREAT about it either.
With
a few exceptions: First, as you can tell just from the commercials,
the makeup work, designed by Rick Baker, is mighty impressive, most
especially the work done on Tim Roth to transform him into nasty
chimpanzee General Thade.
Secondly,
Danny Elfman's score (what, did you really think it would be a different
composer on a Tim Burton film?) is strong, and for once doesn't
sound like yet another variation on Batman. It's a very martial
composition, drum heavy, clearly echoing the original film.
And
finally, there are also a handful of excellent performances, again,
the most notable being Roth. He's terrifying, and really gets into
the hopping around stuff. Helena Bonham Carter is also really strong,
emerging as a wonderfully sympathetic "human liberationist." Though
her makeup cheats a little by making her look a lot less ape-like
than the other simians, she still throws in the occasional chimp-like
response at surprising moments, when she's scared or threatened
for example, and it's great. She also makes the erotic interest
she feels for Mark Wahlberg's character palpable. And finally, Cary-Hiroyuki
Tagawa really impresses in his role as a loyal veteran gorilla general.
Though he's billed far below Michael Clarke Duncan, who also plays
a loyal gorilla general, Tagawa's role is just as big, and a lot
more complex and interesting. The gorilla makeup is much more restrictive
than that which the actors playing chimps and orangutans wear, which
means Tagawa's moving, involving performance is all the more remarkable,
because it's done almost exclusively with his eyes. Tagawa's had
small parts in a lot of movies; hopefully, this will be a breakout
role for him. He deserves to be seen more.
As
far as the other actors, though . . . Well, what can we say about
Estella Warren's performance? She's a beautiful young woman. About
Wahlberg's performance? He has a very impressive physique. About
Michael Clarke Duncan's performance? He's very tall.
Now,
lest you accuse me of being unfair, it's true that none of these
actors are given very much to do. Duncan, especially, basically
only gets to stand around taking orders for an hour and a half until
the very end of the movie when the sloppy screenplay calls on him
to, laughably, after having spent almost the entire movie being
slavishly, blindly loyal, renounce everything he has heretofore
believed in, on the basis of one line of dialogue from a character
he has no reason to trust. It's pretty lousy timing, too, since
just moments ago these beliefs and loyalties which he now rejects
out of hand caused him to kill a very sympathetic character.
Paul
Giamatti basically plays the Peter Ustinov role from Spartacus
(the other movie, besides the original Planet, which this
movie is a remake of). Burton apparently directed him to give a
very shticky performance, unfortunately. His most egregious moment
comes when he uses Rodney King's famous plea, "Can't we all just
get along?" which is extraordinarily offensive. To be sure, the
line gets a laugh, but, like all the attempts at humor in the film,
it's cheap and desperate.
Kris
Kristofferson either had a gambling debt to pay off, or he needs
to have a serious talk with his agent. Otherwise, it's a mystery
why he even took his part, it's so small.
There
really isn't much else to write home about in this Apes.
The sets get old very quickly. Apparently every ape likes to live
in a place just like his fellow ape. There are a couple of inept
chase sequences in the ape "city" which are downright confusing
because it seems that the fleeing humans keep passing the same doorway
over and over.
Precious
little imagination was expended on the story or concept. Instead
of coming up with an interesting new social structure for the apes,
the movie uses Rome – the ancient Rome of Hollywood i.e. Spartacus,
Quo Vadis, etc. – as its model. There's so much talk
about Senator A and Senator B and General C and dissolving the senate
blah blah blah if you close your eyes you'll think you wandered
into a showing of Gladiator.
About
the only truly great ape moment, aside from the incorporation of
simian behavior into the performances which I discussed above, comes
near the end when an ape army rushes into battle. The soldiers all
drop down to the ground and charge on all fours. It's funny –
but also scary, creepy, and an extraordinarily visual image.
The
second worst thing about the movie is the adaptation of a couple
of the original's famous lines. Their insertions here are so clumsy
they're inept; they fall to the floor with leaden clunks.
The
worst thing? The ending. Stupid. Nothing more to be said about it.
But
actually, I'm wrong. The absolute worst thing about Planet of
the Apes 2001 is that it gives no evidence of why it needed
to be made. It brings practically nothing new or interesting to
the concept, other than improved makeup and more apelike behavior
in the apes. They spent $100 million to remake a classic, but apparently
never stopped to figure out why.
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