The idea of remaking this cult sci-fi flick was not made particularly welcome by the fans of the original movie, with them wondering exactly what the point of the exercise would be and leading to all involved insisting it was instead a reworking and would follow an entirely new story. Personally, having never seen the original I was quite intrigued as to how this would turn out, and was able to go to the cinema without harbouring any resentment towards this updated classic. Doesn�t stop me thinking it was a pile of pants though.
Burton is a sporadically excellent film-maker, however everyone is capable of making a dud and I�m afraid this follows Mars Attacks! into the dustbin of Burton films to avoid. He just doesn�t seem to do action very well. Even his usually spectacular sets seem overblown this time, and longtime collaborator Danny Elfman�s score doesn�t really seem to know what it is trying to achieve. Kind of like the rest of the film. It�s as though someone realized that they could do great ape makeup now but rather than coming up with an original idea, decided to retread old ground to save time in case someone else got there first. And the makeup is amazing, very convincing and easily Oscar winning�but it�s just not good enough to carry the film; you�d need a plot to do that.
However, it seems that in a sudden burst of equality, due to the mostly unfair depiction of primates on screen, the producers elected to allow a team of apes access to a typewriter to churn out the script. It is awful, packed with gaping plot holes and the sort of lines you wonder how the actor�s deliver them with a straight face. Wahlberg is, unfortunately for him, not charismatic enough to front the cast, despite his best efforts. Meanwhile the rest of the humans are virtually monosyllabic, I�m not sure if it was supposed to make them seem primitive or just to save on paper. Kris Kristofferson is hardly onscreen for any length of time, while it seems Estella Warren�s acting abilities peaked as Red Riding Hood hushing that wolf in the Chanel adverts. The apes fair little better: Bonham-Carter is a quite annoying do-gooder with far too human like looks, while Tim Roth is vastly overrated as the evil Thade. Although his body movements are impressive, the character is just too evil, there�s nothing else to him and Roth seems to think he can achieve this by staring from underneath his (prosthetic) eyebrows constantly while talking in a growl. Duncan does little better resorting, like the rest of the gorillas, to a bad Darth Vader impersonation and just being hairy.
After a succession of coincidences which, while facilitating the continuation of the threadbare plot, add up to annoying numbers and two cringe-inducing lines lifted from the original (maybe a desperate attempt to peddle the �homage� rather than remake idea), finally we reach the ending, which after the famous finale of the original was going to have to pull out some stops to impress. Burton apparently filmed five endings to get everyone guessing�surely that wasn�t the best of the bunch? It makes little to no sense and is actually a little predictable, I don�t think it�s a big spoiler to say it is closer to the ending of the source novel than the original film was.
So it was, after all, an exercise in pointlessness, with the only sparks of interest being the makeup, Charlton Heston�s ironic dying tirade against the danger of handguns and the first human-ape love triangle legally available on film in the UK. But hey, if that�s what floats your boat, don�t let me judge you. |
