Review of Planet of the Apes
Year: 2001 Reviewer: Chris Docker
Tim Roth seemed a bit apologetic at the Edinburgh Film Festival premiere of this movie `It's just a bit of fun . . . treat it as a bit of fun' he kept saying. Well Tim, get a family of four together with nowt to do on a Saturday afternoon and it might be a bit of fun. Gather several hundred film addicts together for the surprise movie of the festival and expecting the same reception is a bit much (especially when they could see it at half the price the next day when it went on general release). The costumes are very good: technology and makeup has come a long way since the first cult movie classic of the same name. Unfortunately script seems to have gone backwards. The movie starts promisingly enough with a space station time-slip introduction. But having gone to enormous lengths to create the situation and life-like apes, the whole thing is ruined by resting on awful dialogue and corny 20th century jokes that are guaranteed to avert any suspension of disbelief. These super-intelligent apes toy with humans that they capture and one can't help feeling the filmmaker is toying with the audience too. One is reminded of Director Tim Burton's reputed comment that he only wanted to make movies in order to make money. If he has shown great originality and creativity in recent films to suggest he didn't mean that, this film, on the other hand, simply looks like little more than one narrow filmmaker's dream come true again . . .
Rating: 4/10
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