Planet of the Apes (2001)
Mark Walbergh, Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Roth, Michael Clarke Duncan, Estella Warren; d. Tim Burton

Once apon a time, an actor named Mark Walbergh, who used to be called Marky Mark, got on a train named Planet of the Apes. Its conductor was a man named Tim Burton, and the train was run by a group of people collectively named Twenieth Century Fox. Also on the plane were actors named Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Roth, and Michael Clarke Duncan. Walbergh waved at all of these actors and then sat down in his seat, getting ready for the train to leave. Just a few miles outside, I was sitting on a bench, eating Pop-tarts, Cocoa Puffs, and drinking Lipton Iced Tea. Suddenly, the train was on its merry way to its destination: Quality. However, somewhere between crud and high camp, which was were I was sitting, the train deraled, resulting in a spectacularly horrendous train wreck that I just couldn’t pull my eyes away from. As I watched the wreck unfold before my eyes, I asked myself two questions: 1) Dang, what was Tim Burton smoking? and 2) Why the hell wasn’t Jurassic Park III this interestingly horrendous?

Am I comparing watching Planet of the Apes to watching a train wreck? You bet your butt. It’s not like I wanted to see this in the first place. From the very start I thought this was a bad move by Burton, and I haven’t even seen the original. So, discovering that Burton’s adaption of Planet of the Apes, which he constantly insisted was not a remake of the original, was a horrible film wasn’t too surprisng. Planet of the Apes is one seriously confused film. It doesn’t know what it wants to be. A parody? Even though there’s some funny original Planet of the Apes inside jokes, it succeeds mostly in mocking itself. A love story? Ha! Which is what I thought most of the time during the film’s bad romantic subplots. An action adventure? Oh yeah, the action was just about as enticing as watching sand on an unwindy day. Not to forget that most of the action sequences were the biggest rip-off of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which I didn’t like) that I’ve ever seen. I think it worked best as, you got it, a bad movie! The film has no idea what the word "logic" means, which is evident in its unintentionally hillarious ending. I frequently complain that many films fail to set up characters so that we care about them (the terrible Nightwatch and the superb Artificial Intelligence being some of them), and this is exactly what Planet of the Apes did. Mark Walbergh is thrust into the action too fast and too soon. The only thing I fully understood about Mark Walbergh, whose character I shall call Spacedude, was that he was all too anxious to get off the planet (which Roger Ebert so humorously pointed out on his TV show).

I embarrisingly admit this is the first film of Helena Bonham Carter’s that I have seen. While she does a terrific job with the horrid matieral she was given, her character, whom I shall call Hippychimp, is embrassasingly stuffed in not one, but two really, really bad romantic subplots. First, the much-discussed interspecies love triangle, involving her, Spacedude, and Estella Warren’s character. At least there was some time dedicated to showing Hippychimp getting the hots for Spacedude, but Estella Warren begins to act like a catty female dog for no apparent reason. Was it that time of the month? The only reason I could come up with for her unexplaned behavoir was that Mark Walbergh was/is hot, thus, she wanted to be with his hotness? Who knows. Then, there is the romantic subplot involving Carter and Tim Roth. Tim Roth was good when he was being evil. However, when he was being tender and caring he made out to be a more pathetic villain than Richard Roxburgh’s Duke (Moulin Rouge). Unfourtnatley, Carter is subject to Roth’s tender side.

What’s most dissapointing about this film is that visually, it’s dull. The thing I love about Tim Burton is that his visuals are always amazing, but the only good thing visually about this film was the much discussed make up. That’s it. The rest of it looks like one really bad Hollywood backlot set.

Now, of course this film gets a slightly higher rating then the unbearingly bad Jurassic Park III because it has a few redeeming qualities. However, only one of them is for artistic merit. That would be Danny Elfman’s score, as well as the kick-butt remix by he’s-got-to-be-making-mad-money-now-a-days Paul Oakenfold (who delivered a soundtrack’s worth of remixes for Dominic Siena’s action thriller Swordfish). Other redeeming qualities, which added to the film’s low rating, was the high camp factor, and Mark Walbergh. Not because he was good but because he was so darn hot. That’s it!

© Vert A Go Go Reviews 2001