PLANET OF THE APES (2001) review

This is going to be a spoiler review of PLANET OF THE APES by Tim Burton. Why? Because given some of the belligerence and out right anger I witnessed tonight at a public sneak here in Austin, Texas… Well the film is going to have a very loudly vocal HATE MOB that will scream assaults at the film without ever thinking about what they are seeing… From where it all comes… And why it is that it is the way it is.

I’m not going to pretend that I am right to anyone other than myself, but perhaps by writing this all out, some of you may come to appreciate a film that otherwise might have frustrated you.

Before I get to the spoilers, I’ll deal with the non-plot orientated areas of the review, so you folks that have to read something, will have something to read.

There are very few absolutely fantastic beyond doubt aspects to this film, which I like quite a bit, but do not love, but may come to.

Rick Baker’s work is, as we could all tell from the trailers… Simply genius. Baker has so far surpassed any and all ‘personal’ special effects make-up artists that I really and truly just constantly remain in utter awe of the man. Sure, there are many other people responsible for the make-up beyond just him, but it is with his techniques and guiding hand that the make-up becomes ALIVE. Had nothing else worked, I would have simply stared in awe at this work. Tim Roth’s Thade is… wow. Watching Roth work within the make-up is just… Wow. Watch the way an Academy Award winning cinematographer photographs supreme make up… This looks a hundred times better than computer generated characters. Here, because of Baker’s make up, we see the actors transforming their entire body language and physicality… their emotional and psychological reactions to the physical stimuli around them.

Now, while make-up alone would get me to watch this film again, admittedly I entered film fandom wanting to grow up to be just like Lon Chaney Sr. But beyond that we have a wonderful score by Danny Elfman. Concussive and dynamic. Then there is Wahlberg’s complete indifference to the world he’s faced with. I love his distance, it isn’t outrage or fear… He knows, simply, that he has to get off this crazy planet. He accepts that in a strange bizarre cosmos of infinite possibilities that this could be one of those possibilities and decides to simply try to get out of there. COMPLETELY UNDERSTANDABLE. It’s like when you get a flat tire on the side of the road. You know that it sucks, that it is a pain in the ass, that it isn’t fair… but you get out there, pull out the jack and the spare and get on with your life. Either that or you’re an emotionally overactive retard crying at the steering wheel not willing to move forward, desperately dialing roadside service in the prayers that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family isn’t occupying that house right over there.

Wahlberg isn’t here to change things, but to leave. He came searching for his monkey and got more than he bargained for. Now it’s time to just move on.

The Apes and all the fuzzy species of this planet rule. David Warner as a senator filled me with a delight I was not expecting. Glen Shadix is a GOD. That’s right Otho from BEETLEJUICE, the Mayor from NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS… For me I could just see Rick Baker looking at Shadix and saying, "Now this has the potential for my masterpiece!"

I believe, without a doubt that Shadix’s & Baker’s Senator Nado is one of the greatest works of make-up in history. An utterly amazing achievement. Shadix transforms the make-up, as very few actors in history have into a place to become born anew. I have never seen Shadix resonate quite like this… Regal and boisterous. It reminded me, if ever so briefly of the great Charles Laughton in SPARTACUS, oh how I wish Shadix had as strong a part to play, but oh… in this character there was greatness. The sort of greatness that too briefly hits the silver screen these days.

Problems with the film. Oh yes, there are many. Once again Tim Burton shows that he is not meant for action filmmaking on a grand scale. Burton has exhibited only once in his career the potential for this area. In SLEEPY HOLLOW, when he had Ray Parks being the ‘in the costume’ genius of the Headless Horseman. But here, there is no fluidity of action. It is just a messy jumble of flying apes. Hey, I love apes, I think the furry bastards rule… But I simply could not handle all the leaping about stuff. The pummeling of enemies was wonderfully apish. But the pandemonium anarchy of it all just didn’t work well for the audience or myself.

The human characters that were native to the Planet of the Apes were just tediously boring. What was gained by having the humans talking? They didn’t say anything of interest. Nothing they talked about moved the plot forward. Nothing they said gave us insight into their characters. Keeping them mute, but understanding language would have been stronger. And this is indicative of a larger problem… the fact that I wish all the humans would just shut up, and let’s watch the apes do their thing… Well, this is typical Tim Burton.

Burton understands the odd, the strange, the unusual. However, he is bored with humans in general. These were outcasts, but not outcasts like Burton’s outcasts. Burton’s outcasts were in Ape make-up. The humans came straight from the sets of such classics as WATERWORLD and THE POSTMAN, but even blander.

Thankfully, we don’t focus on them much, but enough to be distracting, thus my desire to muzzle these soulless (THADE IS RIGHT) humans.

Here in this film we see the key flaws of Burton and the key joys of him as well.

Burton is a fetish filmmaker. I walk into a Burton film knowing that so long as the characters are ‘strange and unusual’ Burton will make me love them. However, if he attempts to direct a character that say… approaches normalcy well, he can’t for the life of himself make them interesting. This is why it is so important that he direct GEEK LOVE as soon as humanly possible.

The key problem with the film is that this isn’t a complete reimagination of the PLANET OF THE APES by Tim Burton. This was a project that Burton was brought in on late in the game… and sort of put a tad of his mark on.

He spent his time on the Apes, but never figured out the humans. Had Burton had another 6 months to work on the script and to figure out what the people on this planet would be like. How to play the ‘human slavery’ thing on out. Perhaps explore the slave camps as being more than cages, but areas where the humans tried to survive… created songs and mythologies… Simple things. Perhaps these people over thousands of years might have created a semi religious belief in a savior.

Perhaps if the humans behaved more like say… a trained animal. Perhaps if they were made to feel ugly and insecure about themselves. An environment where a babe like Estella Warren, would feel terribly ugly and horrible about herself, in comparison to the beautiful ChimpGal- played by Helena Bonham Carter.

Perhaps reimagining it to the point to where Wahlberg would be the ONLY human, and that on this Planet humans are a myth like Unicorns and Dragons. And here… finally is one. And it represents a philosophical threat to a world where the Apes believed they were the only life in the galaxy.

However, in this half-reimagined version… there’s quite a bit that I love and quite a bit that I’m unhappy with and at the end of the film… The ending of the movie… WELL, it actually saves the film and pushes it into the area of potential uber coolness.

Now… to be able to get into this, I have to discuss spoilers. And you might want to get the film completely free of this type of spoiler. Maybe you didn’t get mentally raped by Matt Drudge’s stupid selfish and malicious act of knee-jerk reactionism. Something that I believe is new to Matt Drudge, who… ahem… always thinks things out.

SO BEWARE OF SPOILERS!!!! DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS POINT!!!!! COME BACK AFTER YOU’VE SEEN THE ENTIRE FILM!!!!!

Ok, first off… Having seen the film, let me confirm that indeed Matt Drudge did spoil the end of the film. His denial that what he did was even about the ending of the film, just shows that he was responding to a single bit of information that was brought to his attention out of context, and him in a misguided attempt of having an exclusive (one that he did not fully investigate before publishing… something that he’s never done before I’m sure, though I have)

WHY does the ending of PLANET OF THE APES save the film for me?

Because it is beautifully Rod Serling… Because it is a wonderful BIZARRO/SUPERMAN story… Because, it is the final signature on the film by Tim Burton saying… well, we dealt with the material in the book, but now… now let’s leave it where I’m really interested in telling a story.

First off… What is the ending exactly? That’s a question that I heard a lot of the audience that attended this sneak ponder.

Is it the future of Earth? An Alternate Dimensional Earth?

The ending is a cautionary tale about genetic engineering gone astray. You see, on the spaceship at the beginning of the film, we learn that earth types are genetically re-engineering various primate types to become smarter and more interactive with man to perform various dangerous operations.

OK… We learn that. At the end of the battle on the Planet of the Apes, we have learned that the planet is the way it is because the Oberon crashed, thereby releasing the animals that were genetically engineered, who eventually revolted against their human masters, and took over. Then with a thousand years of advanced evolution due to the unstable DNA messed with man, the Apes are now far more advanced than they should be… and thus the Planet of the Apes.

Now, we see Wahlberg fly back to Earth through the bizarre time portal/dimensional shift thingee… Well, in flying back to Earth he hit another time jump, sending him a thousand or so years into the future of Earth… An Earth that had been genetically engineering primates… and where the apes, like on the crash landed planet, revolted and took over. Thereby reforming the planet into their own image.

Now, why do I love that?

Because, the reactions of the Apes on this planet to seeing a man was SHOCK. Like they had never seen one before. Perhaps here, on this future, the Apes had completely killed all humans, and now… here at the end of our film, Wahlberg is indeed the last of the dodos… a beautiful and unique snowflake of the past. Set to be placed in a zoo and for public display for the rest of his unnatural life. And that… that is Tim Burton. That’s the mark that I loved.

The rest of the film had a thorough mixture of delight in the makeup and actors beneath… and disappointment in the unresolved. This is Tim Burton’s most uneven film to date. The least of his work in my opinion. At the same time, this is now the high water mark in Rick Baker’s career.

Though I do wish this had been better conceived and thought out… I do like quite a bit of what is here. It is a mixed bag, that has amazing amazing things that I love.

These are the hardest films to review… the mixed bag… the film you wish was more than what it is, but that I still enjoyed. Believe it or not, you can enjoy a flawed thing. It was like the Boba Fett action figure I sent off for as a kid that was supposed to a have a launching missile from his back… Sure, it came without the missile being able to be launched. And I was momentarily angry about it, but soon I began playing with my flawed toy. Using my imagination to help the toy be something more than a non-firing missile toy. And then when I saw Boba Fett in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and his missile thing didn’t fire… I wasn’t disappointed, because well, I knew we just weren’t seeing that scene on screen. And that’s fine, because I have an imagination where I can take the elements that do appeal to me and delight in them. Especially with a movie that is trying to have as much fun with APES-lovers as this one is.

This is a matinee film. Personally, if I were you, I’d go see MADE or SEXY BEAST or HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH first.. but you should see this film on the big screen if nothing more than to appreciate the genius of Rick Baker and the Burton moments that shine through an underdeveloped picture. I blame 20th Century Fox for wanting to make this film be their tent pole film of 2001, when it should have been set for 2002.