Boy.

If there ever was a poster child for choppy, somewhat coherent films (as far as theme goes anyhow), this one would be in the running. Trying to make sense of it really is pretty tough.

Basically the new Planet of the Apes is a lot like the original in a lot of ways while also being slightly updated for our changing, chaotically-blurbed consumer culture times.

The plot is pretty similar to the original. A space station doing... something... encounters an anomaly in space that looks a lot like an Aurora Borealis. They send out a chimp to investigate but the chimp is lost. An astronaut, Captain Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg), tries to rescue the chimp but finds himself stranded on a planet where apes are in charge of the society. He is forced into slavery and has to find a way to escape!


Before I start, I should probably point out that I was less than impressed by the original. I was born in 1973, a few years after it came out, and though I was sorta aware of the idea of the films, I never cared about them. So I have about zero nostalgia factored into my viewing of the new film. I should probably also point out that I have some pretty mixed to negative feelings about Tim Burton's style of picture (though I did enjoy Sleepy Hollow for the most part) so that might also color my views of it.

In general I don't think that the movie worked too well. It has to do with consistancy and how well it worked as a science fiction film though. I don't think that it functioned within that structure. The only other film that I can recall of (the director) Tim Burton's that was a science fiction film was Mars Attacks which was basically a spoof of old invaders-from-Mars sorts of films so perhaps he doesn't have the proper experience/background to run a consistent and coherent science fiction film? From my point of view the film was structured in a way that was somewhat similar to his The Nightmare Before Christmas. That is a lot of ideas but not enough framework or story to hold these ideas.

The acting... Well... What can you say about people in ape suits? The acting was interesting. Wahlberg (as the human spaceman) does an all right job with his part but he is (oddly enough) mostly window dressing. He didn't arouse any pathos with me with his performance so I pretty much didn't care what the heck happened to him. With the absence of any strong leading man, the film was forced to stand without a definite focus. If he was backed up by a strongly focused film then his stoic acting style might have worked but the film would have been better served with a emotional actor than one that just lets things happen.

In fact most of the acting is window dressing for the visuals. I am including research into ape behavior in this visual. The apes frequently (mostly as asides) lapse into primatelike bahavior: throwing fits, beating chests, and stuff like that. I have to give the developers points for research. For the most part though, the behavior detracted from my viewing of the film rather than enhancing it. An example of this is a bizarre primate lovemaking (or at least foreplay) ritual snuck into the escape sequence. I enjoyed this with the part of my brain that usually enjoys nature shows but I really didn't go to the film to stimulate that portion of my brain!

Helena Bonham Carter works with what she has fairly well though. She plays an ape that has sympathies for humans and seeks to help them escape from slavery because of some sort of romantic interest in Wahlberg's spaceman character. Her emotional performance was actually somewhat moving which impressed me because she sure did have a lot of makeup on. The 'sympathy for humans' aspect of the character (and indeed that whole subplot) confused me though because the allegory did not seem to work within itself consistently.

Tim Roth also played an interesting role as Cade, the evolved chimp leader of the primate army. He seemed to really be 'into' the role and played it with a whole lot of energy. I did find some of that energy distracting at times but under the basic structure of the film he was playing an evolved monkey so the part was supposed to be played with a lot of energy.

The pacing is not very smooth but it does get the job done. At some parts where it should whiz by in an action sequence though, it stops to check out the scenery though, kinda like people checking out a car accident (like the animal lovemaking ritual held in the middle of the escape sequence). In a lot of ways this felt a lot like the older slapstick movies in which we see the actors running through a series of movie sets. It is pretty tough to have a real connection with the actors when you can’t take their peril seriously. It felt a whole lot like The Nightmare Before Christmas because it was paced like a series of skits, sort of a series of gags or “Isn’t this cool”’s. Not satisfying.

The ape costumes are really solid but not different enough from the original costumes for me to give them too much credit for them. They are different enough to really make the apes seem alien but done in such a way to accent the actor/actresses natural ‘look.’ I did have a bit of an issue with the look of the humans in the film. I can understand that they didn’t want to go the exploitation route of the previous film (bare-chested guys and women in short cavegirl suits) so that wasn’t a big issue but everything is far too Hollywoodized! The human cavemen outfits are just too dang nice looking and the human woman wears lipstick! Lipstick! Bright red stuff too! Yeah she looks very pretty with it but what the heck???!!

The dialogue in the film is a pretty mixed bag. If a science fiction film is to be successful then it needs to match every piece of dialogue against itself for inconsistencies not only in terms of the colloquial expressions used but if those expressions fit within the fictional context in which the film is set. This is a big problem in this film. The primates use whatever dialogue suits them whenever. Idioms abound, even pretty current ones and ones ripped from the headlines (people that have seen the trailers and ads know the “Can’t we all just get along” one). This is a problem in the same way that the primatelike articulations is a problem. The people making the film didn’t understand how to insert them into the film properly. We see expressions in which ‘ape’ is substituted for human and vice versa with no real fear of the consequences (with regards to the possible allegorical structure the film is presenting). So we see a big mish-mash of references such as “Human Rights” which don’t mean the same thing as is meant now (humans are treated like animals so it could mean “Animal” Rights instead).

The biggest problem with the film lies in its allegory. It is obvious that the film is trying to present an allegorical message. It flirts with overtly telling people the allegory but just doesn’t remain consistent. I think that much of this is derived from a mix of the filmakers trying to adhere to the allegory of the original film but also trying to update it to fit the current climate in the United States. It didn’t work.

So we have such mixed messages as the “Human Rights” faction that is trying to get the humans rights equal to the apes. At times this seems to be akin to the “Animal Liberation Front” of current headlines (willing to perform terrorist activities to free captive “animals”) while at other times it seems to lambast current society by comparing it to pre-Civil War slavery. Another example is the “Can’t we all just get along” statement which might have had a little bite to it if it had been done correctly (by the oppressed party) but it is instead inserted as a sort of sly jab by a primate that has been taken captive (by the humans) and it just doesn’t work.

The ending is a big problem all unto itself with regards to allegory (but I am not going to give it away). The only way that I can see it could work would be if it is simply meant as an allegorical symbol but with the inconsistency of the rest of the film it simply confuses matters all the more.

Overall if you can allow yourself to lean back and not intellectualize the film too much I would imagine that it could be a decent watch but I couldn’t do this myself so I can’t recommend the film. Go and check out the other films if you want to see better versions of this one. If you love everything Tim Burton has done or are the biggest Planet of the Apes fan ever, you might want to check this film out.

Recommended:
No