Bought a ticket, so it made a monkey out of me.
That doesn't mean it's a better movie. Which in my book it ain't by a long shot.
Story is only roughly parallel to the original movie: an astronaut crash lands on a planet ruled by apes while man is the subservient species. The org had Heston as a cynical space traveler who could care less about the planet which he knows that he left behind. Here Wahlberg is a orders-defying cretin who only has himself to blame for the mess he causes.
He crash lands. And before you can say "SPCA", Wahlberg has been captured, brought to the apes' city, sold to slavery, and plopped into Carter's house as a servant. The speed at which this happens is as suspension of disbelief snapping as spaceships going "whoosh!" by the camera in soundless outer space.
And before you can say "Danielle Steele", Carter is staring at Wahlberg with moonie eyes, barely containing herself from jumping his bones. Meanwhile Estella Warren inherits the Hot Human Babe part from Linda Harrison, but is only capable of staring at the world with a vacuousness bordering on complete retardation while her too pouty lips threaten to overwhelm her face. Kris Kristofferson is the token human grizzled veteran.
The actors portraying apes fare much better. Carter is the way-too sympathetic chimpanzee (here just a gadabout daughter of a senator as opposed to apes-feminist scientist in the Heston version). She brings an empathy to her character that Kim Hunter did not possess. Clarke who has SF under his belt thanks to Armageddon is the head gorilla, who reports to Tim Roth, the Big Banana chimpanzee general who plays his character with a malevolence that is Stalin-level sociopathic.
As with any Tim Burton flick, Planet of the Apes has a very cool production design. The apes' city is too claustrophobic for me and not an improvement over the starkness of the org movie's. The costuming is simply stunning tho.
And then there's the makekup. Let's be clear about this right now: pack the 2002 Oscar for Best Makeup and ship it to Rick Baker. It's so astonishing that I simply see no way he can lose next April. Roth's look is especially stunning. The way the appliances move, you swear it's skin and flesh. On the other hand the female apes' makeup was a little too humanized. Combined with their shag haircuts, the females almost took on the appearance of ugly women.
Since Burton was standing on the shoulders of his predecessors, he was able to imbibe his apes with mannerisms which were very apelike--thumping each other with the backs of their hands, examining objects by nuzzling them, tantrums when it's time to throw a fit.
Then there's Heston's turn as an old chimpanzee in this version. His bit is interesting for two reasons: how his dialogue is a takeoff on a chunk of his orginal speechifying and how he rails against humans having guns--an interesting position given Heston's real world position with the NRA. Irony strikes.
At various points in Apes things happen which a child could see thru. They're so easy to spot, it's laughable. Then there's the hey-why-don't-we-have-machinery-which-has-been-off-for-thousands-of-years-work-first-time, every-time schtick. This was one of the hoariest plot points imaginable found in the god-awful Battlefield Earth and here Burton is equally shameless. Plus just how the machinery survived to reach its current location was conveniently side-stepped.
Then we get to the "shocker" ending, and again; a child could see it coming from a mile away. Just lame beyond belief.
As if the overall lameness of the script wasn't enough, having the movie built around someone as utterly lacking in charisma as Wahlberg was a giant mistake. His sidekick role in The Perfect Storm was a perfect match for him. Since Boogie Nights was an ensemble movie, it didn't suffer either. But Planet of the Apes suffers big time.
Astounding makeup, cutting edge F/X, but poor human acting and a lame-o script combine for a less than wonderful movie experience. Burton hopefully fares better next time.
Movie's suitability for: