Angry Simcoe, out at the movies: Planet of the Apes, an actual movie review

by Simcoe J. Gould

Planet of the Apes barely held my interest. It was trash, and I mean that in the most vitriolic way. Here's my impression of Tim Burton directing this film: "Hey, look everybody, monkeys!" And now here's my impression of Tim Roth in this film: "Grrrrr! Sneer!" (repeat ad infinitum.) What a waste. It was about 45 minutes into the film before Mark Wahlberg's character could grab enough dialogue time to actually get around to wondering aloud "Hey, so what's with these monkeys running everything?" Unfortunately, there was no dialogue time for anyone to answer him, because everyone had to get back to flinging themselves through the air and screeching. Damn.

Actually, midway through the movie I had already decided that Burton is at his "visually stimulating" best when he doesn't have to stick to the constraints of physics and reality. Like Nightmare, or Beetlejuice, or hell - even PeeWee. Those movies were fun to watch. This movie was monotonous, monochromatic, claustrophobic and too dark. Like, so dark I thought it was underexposed. The whole thing took place on maybe 3 soundstages; jungley-village set, desert set, generic castle-like interior. Oh wait, I think there was a space station in there somewhere. Whatever. Yawn.

Mostly I was surprised at the lack of detail. Tim Burton has somehow gotten this reputation as a director who painstakingly crafts entire worlds in his films, but I could recall only two brief scenes that depicted any sort of Ape culture; first when the human slaves are being carted through the village and we get an establishing shot of an alleyway where apekids are playing ball, an apebarber is giving a haircut, and an apewoman is putting on makeup or something. Second, at the end of the film, we eavesdrop on an apesoldier praying at his altar to Simos, the god of the species. Other than that, we're left on our own to fill in everything else about an entire race that is supposed to be advanced, cultured, and self-sustaining. We learn nothing about their government, their education, their military hierarchy, their "family values," their agriculture, economy... nothing. If they hate humans so much, why do they all wear such fashionable clothes? Why do the females pluck their eyebrows and wear lipstick? Seems fatuous to me.

The myriad opportunities to make allusions to race relations or animal rights debates were left untouched. In fact, this film was devoid of anything that could be considered a "message," probably to keep from potentially offending any segments of the merchandising demographics. The threatening and powerful "human rights movement" that inspires the crackdown in the film never materializes on screen. In fact, Helena Bonham-Carter's character is THE ONLY activist in the movie, and she's an underdeveloped and rudderless character. We never see her take any political action at all, actually, instead she falls into that tired cliché of "willful and impetuous Senator's daughter who makes sassy comments and can't be bitchslapped." Hmph, some movement.

I guess it's unfair to pick on the story, though, because action movies like this seem to be granted some kind of "get out of plot free" card the minute they sign the authorization for the special effects budget. (A chimpanzee lands a space pod delicately on the surface of an unfamiliar planet without raising so much as a cloud of dust, yet Mark Wahlberg - the highly-trained USAF pilot - crash-lands the exact same pod TWICE? What the f*ck is that?)

Basically, if you added up all the spoken words in this movie and subtracted anything that was belched out by Tim Roth, you'd end up with 6 pages of crappy dialogue. Tim Burton's a hack.