Subject: Review: Planet of the Apes (2001)

From: Harvey S. Karten <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 23:17:22 -0000

PLANET OF THE APES

 Reviewed by Harvey Karten
 20th Century Fox 
 Director: Tim Burton
 Writer:  Pierre Boulle (novel), William Broyles Jr., Lawrence
Konner, Mark Rosenthal
 Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael
Clarke Duncan, Kris Kristofferson, Estella Warren, Paul Giamatti

   George Bernard Shaw, a lifelong vegetarian, once said that
when he died he would be greeted enthusiastically in heaven by
100 cows, sheep, goats and pigs.  That's good news for Shaw--we
hope that in 1950 when he expired at the age of 94 he found the
reception he predicted.  But it's bad news for the 98% of us that
are carnivores.  Tim Burton now shows us  what it must be like to
be a human being, having enjoyed steak and bacon, zoos and
caged pets, when finally the tables are turned.  This time the
apes, who considered themselves victimized and oppressed by
the human race which had hunted and caged them for a time,
turn the tables.  The tyrannized becomes the subjugators
themselves, treating homo sapiens as inferior forms of life on the
titled planet that they rule.  I suppose you could see "Planet of the
Apes," yet another of the sequels spawned from Franklin J.
Schaffner's classic 1968 movie, as an animal rights advocate's wet 
dream, but such an interpretation would be reductionist, though valid. 
The current version taken loosely from Pierre Boulle's novel with a
screenplay by William Broyles Jr., Lawrence Konner and Mark
Rosenthal, is at once a sci-fi drama with no small amount of action
and adventure and a misanthropic view of world history.  Revolutions
come and go.  The victims become the victimizers, then the
victimizers are defeated and once again either killed,
enslaved or humiliated.  In the Twentieth Century we've seen
revolutionists by Communists and fascists, fundamentalists and
secular governments, all promising freedom and equality of
opportunity for all.  But extremism breeds reaction and so the
cynical cycle of history continues.

   If you're looking for symbolism, you'll get some, but nothing of
the depth of the 1968 version, a visual delight thanks to John
Chambers's make-up department whose costumed actors would
pass muster even by today's special-effects and costume
standards.  Schaffner's innovative film was clearer in its allegorical
implications, taking on both race and class as he displayed the
orangutans at the top of the heap as administrators, the gorillas
as soldiers and the chimps as doctors.  The divisions are caught
vaguely this time around, mostly through dialogue rather than
display, as one of the ruling apes, perturbed that a human being
calls him a monkey, corrects him violently by stating that monkeys
are at the bottom of the status heap just a little higher than
humans.

   The drama takes off as astronaut Leo Davidson (Mark
Wahlberg), disturbed that his favorite and highly trained chimp is
in trouble in space, pushes off in his space pod on an unauthorized
flight to recover his pal.  He runs into an electo-magnetic storm
that pushes him from the year 2029 to a future time, his pod
taking a hard landing on a planet unknown to him.    He soon
discovers that the apes are in charge and humans are enslaved,
some people doing the favored indoor work (house slaves--does
that sound allegorical enough?) and others putting in hard labor. 
He gets together a family of his own species, including the human
leader Karubi (Kris Kristofferson), Karubi's nubile daughter Daena
(Estella Warren), and convinces one female chimp who is
politically on the left, Ari (Helena Bonham Carter) to join the
humans.  If Ari is the peacenik of the group, her diametrical
opposite would be the fascist-like defense minister, Thade (Tim
Roth), as villainous as "Sexy Beast"'s psychotic Don Logan and quite
a bit hairier.  As the rebellion picks up steam, Thade is granted
plenary power by the planet's senate, determined to capture all
the mutinous humans and to treat leader Leo with extreme
prejudice.

   "Planet of the Apes" is not without entertainment value, a
pleasant enough way to kill some time in the theater's air-
conditioned auditorium surveying the desolate and almost bare
scenery (especially that provided by Estella Warren).  But--to coin
a critics' cliche--oh, it could have been so much more.  After all
didn't Tim Burton promise to deliver not a remake but a rethinking
of the simian series?  Think back to Mr. Burton's surprising box
office hit, "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," meant for the little ones but
considered by many to stand out for its visual inventiveness and
originality of concept.  Recall  Burton's "Beetlejuice" and
"Batman," the former unfolding some dazzling special effects with
Michael Keaton's pulling out the stops, the latter, hitting the
screens just one year later, a sizzling adaptation of Bob Kane's
comic book.  Nor is there much of the imagination Burton evoked
in his "Edward Scissorhands," featuring a man-made boy whose
creator had died before attaching palms to the lad's arms.  

   Instead of psycho-villains like the one played by Jack Nicholson
in "Batman" or quirky characters like Johnny Depp's in
"Scissorhands," we get a Tim Roth who is wholly bereft of the kind
of wit that villains are wont to have and Mark Wahlberg, a 30-year-
old fellow who is all too earnest, humorless and generic.  What
passes for the kind of repartee that allows adults to enjoy the stuff
they take the kids to, we get a leaden take-off on Barry
Goldwater's statement that extremism in defense of liberty is no
vice, while the only allusion made to current politics (it's a stretch)
would be a display of what President Bush's missile shield could
do if it worked.

  In one scene, the wide-eyed Daena plans a big kiss on Leo,
asking him to return to the planet real soon.  Maybe he will, but in
a surprisingly adept final scene, we're sure that he's going to have
his hands full.  

   The film has inevitably generated some discussion of its alleged
allegorical import.   Critics together with a segment of the general
audience have already challenged the film on a racial basis (check
the OFCS.ORG website for a growing number of messages about
this aspect).  Says one OFCS member "there's something very
striking about the dichotomy between a bunch of very dark-looking
apes and very white-looking humans....with the exception of the
'token black guy'...all of the human are white...."Apes"...deals with
issues of race, especially a predominant white fear; black
dominance of society....it's not something everyone is going to
think about, but it's still there."  Unlike the old "Apes" film in which
apes are shown have technology and science, the new one in that
critic's view shows the simians as "a bunch of primitive,
self-destructive, drug-addled bush beaters...during showing of the
film when Mark kisses Helena...boils down to the taboo of
inter-race relationships, and the film encourages prejudice instead
of confronting it by using the idea as titillation....The most
disturbing image of all  near the end of the film [is of] the primitive,
unevolved chimp happily crawling back into his prison cell."

   OFCS welcomes contributions from the general public on this
and other issues presented by films such as Tim Burton's "Planet
of the Apes."  Access ofcs.org, click forums, click "critics
discussion forum," and post away.

Rated PG-13.  Running time: 104 minutes.  (C) 2001 by
Harvey Karten, [email-masked]

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