capsule : the much anticipated re-adaptation of the pierre boulle novel comes to the screen as a dark and a little dreary film with lots of chases and fighting , but very little intelligence . 
visually there is much to like about this version , but the approach is to take an adventure after the style of gulliver's travels and treat it as an action film . 
that makes it a film without much center . 
 , 0 ( -4 to +4 ) 
pierre boulle , author of the bridge on the river kwai , wrote planet of the apes ( a . k . a . monkey planet ) , the novel , as a social satire . 
it reads a lot like a fifth book of gulliver's travels . 
humans discover a planet in which the roles of apes and humans have been reversed , not unlike the roles of horses and humans on jonathan swift's island of the houyhnhnms . 
the novel moves somewhat slowly to create some suspense in revealing all the things most film fans know to be true about the nature of the planet . 
it seems to me there is also a statement about human cruelty to animals , but perhaps i was just looking for that . 
when rod serling adapted the novel into a film released in 1968 , he added a number of serling touches , familiar from episodes of the twilight zone and changed the ending to make it more serling-ish . 
the final irony of the original version has become film history . 
without it there could never have been a " planet of the apes " film series . 
i can surmise only that serling ran into serious script problems in how to handle the tricky question of language . 
in the book the apes had their own language and the human eventually learned that language . 
that could have been done in the film , but that would have required the entire film to be subtitled for the non-ape-speaking . 
serling avoided this by having the apes speak english and , of course , there is some justification for that by the end of the film . 
justifying why the apes spoke english may have even been the inspiration for his surprise ending . 
but serling never tackles the all-important question of why a supposedly intelligent human never shows any curiosity or even surprise that the apes speak his own language , a language they had no opportunity to ever hear . 
few viewers questioned this serious plot hole , however , and the film has become well respected in cinema history . 
partial credit at least should go to jerry goldsmith whose extremely inventive score is one of goldsmith's best if not his best . 
when the film's success called for sequels , the filmmakers turned up the violence and they added well-intentioned , though not very subtle , political messages about what was happening in the united states of the 1960s and 1970s . 
while the first film had a little shooting of guns and what was there seemed a little half- hearted , by the second film , beneath the planet of the apes , there was a good deal more violence and from that point on the series had a lot of violence and chases . 
the series concluded with battle for the planet of the apes in 1973 . 
now director tim burton tries his hand at adapting the original book again . 
for those who thought that the 1968 version was not very faithful to the book , burton's new version is even less faithful . 
first , he does not really reverse the roles of the humans and the apes . 
he has them both be intelligent , articulate races battling for a dominance of the planet currently in the hands , uh , make that paws , of the apes . 
that could be a good story too , but it is not planet of the apes . 
as with the mission impossible films and so many other cinematic homages to the third quarter of the last century , the title makes promises that the filmmakers have no intention of honoring . 
in 2029 leo davidson ( mark wahlberg , not this world's most expressive actor ) works on a space station increasing the intelligence and usefulness of apes . 
then a convenient time storm sweeps him up wizard-of-oz-fashion and drops him on an alien planet . 
 ( yes , he survives this storm , but then no storm is perfect . ) 
he quickly finds , not greatly to any surprise he shows , that on this planet apes rule and humans drool , but everybody talks . 
and the language they talk is earth- english . 
apparently it does not even occur to leo that there is a mystery that needs to be explained about that . 
the fact it does not occur to leo and apparently didn't occur to tim burton either is the heart of the real horror of this film . 
both just assumed that if apes were going to talk the language they would speak would be english . 
in any case having one talking race dominating another makes this not a look at human-animal relationships and more one of the master-slave relationships . 
outside of sudan and a few other countries this is a less relevant topic . 
leo is captured to be used as a slave but also is discovered by ari , played by helena bonham carter . 
ari is an attractive ape with close ties to high political power . 
she is bent on making the world a better place . 
perhaps in a previous draft of the script she was called hil-ari . 
in any case with makeup that stifles her usual pout , carter is just about as attractive as she has ever been in a film . 
she may want to consider this to become her standard look from this point forward . 
it is not long before leo escapes with some human and only a couple of sympathetic apes . 
this is a further abandonment of the source material . 
the chase severely limits the interplay of ape and human and the examination of each's place in this reversed society , each important in the book . 
we cannot see how the society works because most of the screentime society has broken down . 
we see the humans either separated from the apes or fighting them . 
burton chooses visceral thrills over cerebral ones at almost every turn . 
this is a miscalculation , as characters so lacking in empathy value are difficult ones to place much emotional investment in . 
they are basically chess pieces and the viewer has little reason to root for them to win . 
the 1968 script had little subtlety , with lines like " i never met an ape i didn't like , " but at least we cared for what happened to taylor , the main character . 
most of what this film has to offer is in the visuals . 
the visual work is spotty but generally nicely done except that so much of the film takes place in the night or in fog . 
this tends to limit close looks at the makeup . 
in general it seems much improved from 1968 . 
the makeup team is led by rick baker instead of john chambers , who did it for the 1968 version . 
in 1968 chambers makeup was a jaw-dropper . 
it was realistic enough to almost be believable but flexible enough to show emotion . 
chambers is good , but if anyone had a chance to best him it would have to be baker . 
today audiences have higher expectations ; baker's visualization is really an improvement . 
these visuals work nicely . 
what does not work is the wire- assisted leaps some of the apes make . 
they look like they were inspired by the physics- defying leaps of crouching tiger , hidden dragon . 
apes spring incredible distances . 
some of the best scenes are apes running into battle looking like they have ape posture , but when they start flying through the air the effect is lost . 
one final visual problem is that the film frequently shows its budget in what should be spectacular battle scenes the camera shows us only a small group of people close-up . 
since the days of lon chaney and boris karloff few actors have crossed over to stardom in a role that required heavy make-up . 
the one actor who has a shot is paul giamatti . 
it is not that his lines are so good , most are silly jokes . 
but he delivers them very well . 
he was always a watchable actor , but has not yet made stardom . 
as the ape-trader limbo he over-emotes to overcome his ape make-up , but does it very well . 
in doing so he makes himself the most interesting thing on the screen . 
he is probably the best thing in the film and conjures up memories of peter ustinov's performance in spartacus . 
as an in-joke there are several lines in the script borrowed from the 1968 film and an old ape played by charleton heston becomes an allusion to the first film by itself . 
danny elfman's score has a nice primitive feel , but jerry goldsmith's 1968 tour de force score is a real classic . 
that score and the whole film will be remembered when the 2001 film is forgotten . 
i rate the remake 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale .