PLANET OF THE APES Dir. Tim Burton. Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Roth, Kris Kristofferson, David Warner, Lisa Marie. The original APES movies were actually pretty good, even allowing for the law of dimishing returns as sequel followed sequel, and they also weren't made all that long ago, really. Strange, then, that well thought of director Burton should seek to attempt a remake of the first one? Well, not really. Like that other blockbuster-merchant, Ridley Scott, Burton is a top of the pile director that tends to concentrate on visual splendour rather than less showy apsects of cinema such as plot or acting. PLANET OF THE APES, thanks to spectacular costumes by Stan Winston, looks fantastic. With a decent budget, there was so much opportunity for invention it's no wonder Burton was happy to have a go. The film feels fantastic, too, and that's all down to Burton. True, the opening sequence is not exactly strong. Wahlberg's character, Leo, is a US Air Force pilot on a space station in the near future. He's a bit annoyed that genetically-modified monkeys do most of the flying, and he only has to train them. Then there follows some stuff involving time travel that appears to have been lifted from the recent LOST IN SPACE movie (a strange choice to "borrow" from!) but soon enough Leo's actually crashed on the PLANET and the quality of the movie leaps dramatically.
	Tim Roth is extremely good as a human-hating general. The talented Brit has judged his simian performance to a tee, and his wild-eyed animalistic ferocity is indeed something special. Fellow Englanders Helena Bonham Carter and David Warner are equally as fine. The former as a kind-hearted and strangely attractive human rights activist, the latter as her politically powerful father. The star of the original movie also turns up in a furry costume, with Charlton Heston's death-bed scene a perfectly judged (and highly necessary) cameo. If I'm being honest, the standard of the plot never really improves, but there's so much to see and enjoy that this hardly matters. There are lots of little touches, such as the ape organ-grinder with his dancing human, and some interesting relationships, especially Wahlberg's understated inter-species romance with Bonham Carter. There's even a great battle scene which shows the CGI-obsessed George Lucas how it should really be done. A hackneyed conclusion, followed by a nonsensical twist for the sake of it, shouldn't detract from your enjoyment of a film that is in many ways absolutely excellent. But, and this is very important, if you're reading this review Joel Schumacher, please please please don't ever do PLANET OF THE APES FOREVER! Chris Denton.
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