Film Review
Pity poor Tim Burton, having to attempt a big budget remake of one of
the best loved and most highly regarded science fiction films of the
1960s, Franklin J. Schaffner's
Planet of the Apes
(1968). Without this high benchmark looming over him, Burton may
have been a little more willing to give free rein to his imagination
and the film would have benefited as a result. Instead,
presumably daunted by the monolith that is Schaffner's classic,
Burton's creativity appears totally stifled, and whilst his film is
competently made, in no way does it compare with the brilliance of the
original, nor, for that matter, with Burton's own earlier films.
This glossy reboot has some impressive effects work but it suffers from
a hopelessly confused narrative and a lack of character depth.
Another let down is the ape masks, which are far less convincing than
those wonderful 1960s creations and appear unintentionally comical for
the most part, with the result that the film's tension and dramatic
impact are massively reduced. Despite a strong cast, the human
characters are dull and uninteresting (to the point that you cannot
care less what happends to them) and the ape humanoids have little to
set them apart from each other. The ending is admittedly quite
ingenious, but that hardly makes up for the film's obvious failings in
so many departments. Can this
really
be a Tim Burton film? Yes, but not as we know it...
© James Travers 2013
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
In 2029, Leo Davidson trains chimpanzees for space missions aboard the
United States Air Force space station Oberon. When the station is
threatened by an approaching electromagnetic storm, Leo is forced by
his superiors to launch his star pupil in a pod to investigate the
storm. He then follows the chimp in a second pod but is caught up
in the storm and crashlands on what appears to be an alien world three
millennia into the future. To his surprise, Leo finds that the
world is ruled by humanoid apes who have enslaved all human beings...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.