Video/DVD Review: Planet of the Apes
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What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that this movie features intense and
prolonged peril, a great deal of violence, and many deaths,
including characters we care about. Characters are beaten and
branded. There is a brief mild sexual situation and some strong
language.
Families can talk about the way that Burton makes unabashedly
clear the parallels between the views of the apes toward humans
and the views of racists and other bigots on Earth. Like those
who have argued for segregation, apartheid, genocide, and
"ethnic cleansing," the apes find justification for their
oppression of humans by insisting that humans are inferior
creatures who have no souls or by demonizing them. The apes
seem to have no problem with sub-species distinctions, and
different kinds of apes work and socialize without any
distinctions.
In this update of the sci-fi classic, Mark Wahlberg plays Leo, an officer in the United States Air Force, working on a space station in 2029. An exploratory aircraft piloted by a monkey disappears into a mysterious electrical field. Against the orders of his commanding officer, Leo follows it to find out what happened. The storm hurtles him through time and space until he crashes on a planet where apes rule and humans are slaves. Ari (Helena Bonham Carter) helps Leo and some of the others escape to a forbidden city that will reveal some of the planet's history. But General Thade (Tim Roth) and his army are in pursuit with orders to destroy them. As Burton promised in interviews, this version does not use the now-famous ending in the first film that showed them the planet they had landed on was Earth. This one ends with a twist that may even top it.
Tim Burton's PLANET OF THE APES is less a remake than a re-imagining of the classic staring Charlton Heston. This version has no loincloth and no Statue of Liberty, and no Roddy McDowell, but Heston does show up for a surprisingly effective cameo -- as one of the apes. As in all of Burton's movies, the art direction is intricate, meticulous, and strangely beautiful. Every detail is a work of art, from the texture of the ape armor to the outline of the spaceship.
Wahlberg makes an appealing, all-American hero, though he is not up to the task of delivering a brief pep talk to the assembled humans. But he is fine in the action scenes and he handles the challenge of kissing females of two different species with reasonable finesse. Overall, the simian performers are better and more believable than the humans. Bonham Carter makes a remarkably fetching ape, using her eyes and body language to deliver a real performance. Roth is a seething presence as the bad guy, Michael Clarke Duncan gives physical and emotional weight to the role of the loyal officer, and Paul Giamatti is hilarious as a slave trader held hostage.
Mad Max (Special Edition)
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