How Do You Know: A Review (Review #250)

HOW DO YOU KNOW

How Do You Know may one day be studied in film schools.  I believe this.  Future filmmakers may be asked to examine how a film written and directed by a talented filmmaker, starring four great actors (two of whom are Oscar winners) could have gone so wildly wrong.  What happened?  How could so many good people be involved in making such a bad film? 

Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) is a major softball player, a legend almost.  However, she's 31, which means she's past it.  Therefore, she's cut from the U.S. team.  Depressed about this and where her life is going, she begins a romance with Matty (Owen Wilson), a professional baseball player who is either unembarrassed or clueless that his womanizing ways would in any way offend Lisa.

Lisa, however, once commented that she would like to date a non-athlete.  With that, a friend gave her number to George Madison (Paul Rudd).  George does call, but he's having troubles of his own.  He's being made the fall guy in some sort of shady business involving securities fraud.  The company's owner is George's own father Charles (Jack Nicholson) who appears at ease with the idea that this son could go up the river for something he did.  George and Lisa's first date is a disaster: two people obviously not in the best condition to be romancing.  However, George is still interested in Lisa, while Lisa totters between the dim man-whore Matty and the sweet guy George.

It's strange that James L. Brooks (the man behind Broadcast News, As Good As It Gets and Terms of Endearment) could have come up with such a disjointed and uninteresting story.  While watching How Do You Know, it always looked as if George and Lisa were in parallel but not intersecting stories.  We never believe George & Lisa would really be interested in each other as people (other than the fact that both Witherspoon and Rudd are very pretty to look at).  Every scene between them was so labored and forced, as if neither really wanted to be with each other but had to because no one else wanted to be with them.

Come to think of it, everyone in How Do You Know appeared to not belong there.  Watching the film is like watching a rehearsal for a play-in-progress, a bad play-in-progress.  None of the performers gave actual performances, and a big part of the blame is in the script.  The stories of George and Lisa were so uninteresting: we can't truly relate to either because for one thing, we didn't get to know them.  Almost instantly we jump into their prospective crises without having us build any investment into their characters.  We can skip over the fact that their situations are so foreign to most of us: softball and investment banking.  How many of us are paid to play sports?

I digress to say that everyone in How Do You Know borders on being completely imbecilic.  Lisa came off as the most stupid woman in what is suppose to be a romantic comedy. I made a note, twice, of how dumb she must be.  First, she must be pretty stupid to continue going off with Matty (a man who basically tells her he will sleep with other women while on the road).  Second, she must be pretty stupid to not see how "good" George is as a romantic partner.  Third, she must be pretty stupid not to realize George is going through a crisis. 

Of course, George is pretty dumb too: he doesn't appear to notice that his girlfriend doesn't care that he might go to jail, and when giving a recap to Lisa on Kramer Vs. Kramer, he can remember Dustin Hoffman being in it but can't quite recall who played his wife. He could not remember Meryl Streep. 

Relating to how dumb George and How Do You Know is, there is a subplot about George's secretary Annie (Kathryn Hahn) and her impending pregnancy by Al (Lenny Venito) who is just her baby daddy.  After she gives birth, Al comes and tenderly asks her to marry him in one of the potentially good scenes in the film.  Guess who is asked to videotape it, and guess who forgot to press record? 

It's bad enough that the scene isn't funny, but it looks as if they wandered into another film altogether.  Truth be told, I'd rather see a story of Annie and Al than George and Lisa, but I digress.

There is also a flaw in How Do You Know in that nearly everyone who isn't dumb (George, Lisa) is so unlikable (Charles, Matty).  While Charles is just a mean sod who would rather see his son go to jail to save himself, Matty takes the cake in being both unlikable and dumb.  He's either a plain narcissist who doesn't get that having women's clothing in all sizes so that his latest bedmate can go home with new clothes is really a turn-off or he's just a complete moron.  Wilson's typical sleepy-eyed delivery doesn't help matters.  Rudd (one of our better actors who excels as the slightly repressed average-Joe in comedy and is a better dramatic actor than he's usually given credit for) can never come off as anything other than whiny and really dumb here.

Brooks' direction was simply not there.  Everyone delivered their lines which, sadly, weren't all that good or clever or funny, sometimes in a rushed manner (as in, let's get this over with as soon as we can) or in an insincere manner (as in, even I don't believe the situations or dialogue).   How insincere you may ask.  In a scene where George is supposedly drunk, he is actually pretty stable: he doesn't slur his words, speak incoherently and is steady on his feet.  

By the end of How Do You Know, I really thought Brooks had made a parody of all these romantic comedies that have been plaguing the American public.  He's far too bright to have thought this was original or good, and all the actors are far too good to think the same (which may explain why they all decided to not waste their energies on trying to act). 

It must have been a parody: even Hans Zimmer's music appeared to sound like all the others in making vague attempts to be cute, and he's by no means my favorite composer (where, oh where, have you gone Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, Victor Young, Alex North, Nino Rota--stay healthy, John Williams). 

If How Do You Know is a comedy, it isn't funny.  If How Do You Know is a drama, it isn't interesting.  If How Do You Know is a romance, it's a bad sign when our heroine has to choose between a slut and a nebbish, both of whom are morons.  Then again, she's pretty dim so it might just work out for either one she chooses. 

Here's one thing I do know: How Do You Know is just bad.

DECISION: F

Primate Lives. Planet of the Apes Retrospective: The Conclusions

PLANET OF THE APES SERIES:
THE CONCLUSIONS

The Planet of the Apes Retrospective

Now that we have Rise of Planet of the Apes out of the way, we can now go over how well it fits into the Planet of the Apes franchise.  This is a curious franchise in that it was never intended to be one.  As far as the original film was concerned, Planet of the Apes was just a one-time deal.  However, the massive success of Planet of the Apes brought an instant demand for a sequel.

Somewhere along the way, the story of a world ruled by apes captured the imagination of the public.  The succeeding sequels proved financially successful, but more than that, a whole world opened up.  We should remember that Planet of the Apes not only created sequels, remakes, and prequels, but two television programs (one animated, one live-action), along with comic books and more importantly, merchandising.  While the original Star Wars trilogy is often credited with opening the floodgates to movie tie-ins like toys and other products, Planet of the Apes I think was the true harbinger (though Star Wars took it to a whole higher level, whether for good or ill I leave up to the reader).  

In short, I imagine that Pierre Boulle, the author of the novel the film series was based on, could not have imagined this story would take on a life of its own. 

I think the Planet of the Apes series captured the imagination of people because the setting was both exotic and familiar.  It was a world like ours except that the dominant group was now the enslaved one: humanity was no longer in charge, and as Taylor (Charlton Heston) told Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans) in the original, it was an "upside down world". 

What the Planet of the Apes franchise also had in its corner is the fact that like all good science-fiction, the authors could talk about taboo or controversial subjects without being blatant about it.  The Planet of the Apes franchise is best when addressing contemporary issues.  Two of the films (the original Planet of the Apes and Escape From Planet of the Apes) I think do the best job of that.  The former manages to discuss such topics as racism, man's ability to destroy himself, and evolution: all while maintaining a high sense of entertainment. 

The latter was more a satire of early 1970's America: the growing women's moment and the cult of celebrity.  However, when it became dark, it become quite sad, a credit to Kim Hunter as chimpanzee Zira and Roddy McDowall as her husband Cornelius. 

The other films in the series worked up to a point, but they couldn't match the previously-mentioned films in intelligence.  I won't lie: of the original five Planet of the Apes film, I've been entertained by all of them.  In fact, I would count myself as a fan of the Planet of the Apes series, except for the abysmal 2001 remake/reboot/re-imagining.   I found that in my retrospective some were more entertaining than others.  I was especially surprised by how good Escape was, both in its wit and humor as well as in the human element (no pun intended). 

However, while I like them all I am not blind to the weaknesses that some of them have.  Conquest of Planet of the Apes has at its heart a good story, but it has the unfortunate situation of being filmed on the cheap (with the end results making the low budget obvious).  Still, in its favor is the fact that the actual ape uprising is still quite terrifying.  I would fault the filmmakers by pulling back from the apocalyptic ending it was originally suppose to have.  If they had kept the ending as intended with no mercy for the humans, it would have made for a better ending.  Granted, it would have made for a bleak, depressing, and despairing ending (and also worse, advocated violent revolution as a solution to the problems in America, not a good idea) , but it would have rung true.  By pulling back to give humanity some hope, I feel has always been a bit of a cheat--especially since on screen it doesn't look terribly convincing.

Battle for Planet of the Apes is also cheap, but somehow it still works and the story does work.  It does have the difficulty of attempting to set up the world in Planet of the Apes and it isn't too successful at that, but despite the cheat battle, the film still works.  Beneath Planet of the Apes might have worked, and while I still found it entertaining a lot of it was sadly a bit laughable. 

However, to go to laughable, look no further than the remake of Planet of the Apes.  Few films have failed so fiercely and so disastrously that it brought the entire Planet of the Apes franchise to a screeching halt. 

Now, what about Rise of the Planet of the Apes?  Well, I found it to be a hybrid of a prequel and reboot, something akin to Superman Returns (which was not exactly attempting to restart a franchise but not exactly a sequel to Superman II).  It could work either way, and I thought it entertaining, with some good things in it, but one too many references to the original Planet of the Apes and an ending that to me didn't signal an uprising of oppressed apes but more a desire for the simians to go back to nature. 

Now, with no further ado, I present My Rankings of the Planet of the Apes films from Best to Worst.

1. Planet of the Apes (1968)
2. Escape From Planet of the Apes
3. Battle for Planet of the Apes
4. Rise of Planet of the Apes
5. Conquest of Planet of the Apes
6. Beneath Planet of the Apes
7. Planet of the Apes (2001)

Nothing will really match the original, both in its intelligence (including the truly shocking twist ending) and its action/adventure elements.  Escape has a great deal of wit to it as well, so that pushes up in ranking.  Battle barely edges out Rise only because I found the story in the former more engaging than the latter, but it was a close call.  Rise ranks higher than Conquest purely because it looks better than the other one, and this one was also a close call.  If it weren't for how cheap-looking Conquest looks, it would have been a better film.

Beneath to my mind is the weakest of the original Ape films and moreover it was a wasted opportunity in terms of a film: the shock is gone, and all that mind-reading business just looks funny and becomes tiresome.  Of course, any of these films, actually, almost any film, will be better than Planet of the Apes 2001: just a mess and the only Planet of the Apes film that is not entertaining in any way, not even in camp value.   

With that exception, I really have no trouble recommending any of the Planet of the Apes films.  In short, I would urge you to...

Next Planet of the Apes Film: War for Planet of the Apes

A Lot of Monkey Business. Planet of the Apes: 1968 vs. 2001

PLANET OF THE APES 1968 VS. 2001

The Planet of the Apes Retrospective

In the annals of these comparisons between the original and the remake, I've frankly never had it so easy.  This is because the remake of Planet of the Apes is such a disaster, such a total mess, that putting one next to the other is a bit like putting Renee Fleming next to William Hung.  The original Planet of the Apes is a masterpiece while its remake/reboot/reimagining (whatever you want to call it) was a piece of garbage that was quickly rejected by the people who were the target audience.  On occasion, I will refer to the original as "1968" and the remake as "2001" so I won't have to keep typing Planet of the Apes. 

The original Planet of the Apes still stands because it did so many things right.  First, it worked on two levels: both on the surface story and as an allegory of the times.  In 1968 the country was going through a tremendous crisis: we had the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Democratic Party convention in Chicago was thrown into chaos because of the riots outside and the Vietnam War plank of the party platform inside, and the war itself was fiercely dividing the nation.  The issue of civil rights was also not settled to say the least. 

Into this maelstrom of a year entered Planet of the Apes.  It can be seen an appreciated just for the story we see: a human who finds himself in a world where it is apes that are the dominant species and humans the servile animals.  However, it is easy to see behind the story presented to us.  1968 also spoke, in a clever and subtle way, about the situations America was facing.

The issue of civil rights is there in the film: the orangutans who, by coincidence, are the lightest-skinned apes, are the ones who have all the power, while the gorillas, coincidentally, the darkest apes are the soldiers and those who do the most menial work.  Even some of the dialogue addressed race relations: at one point the female chimp Zira tells Taylor (Charlton Heston) that to apes, all humans look alike.  How often and sadly has that mindset taken place among people of various races?

1968 also addressed the growing war in Vietnam: the idea of how the apes, specifically the gorillas who thirst for war, want to go to war against the humans (specifically in a jungle-like setting) could be transferred into our adventures into the jungles of a civil war between the Vietnamese.  Though this idea would be explored further in Beneath Planet of the Apes the seeds for a commentary about war were already there.  By placing Heston (who has always been identified with American strength in films) as the weakest character, unable to triumph over the animals, he appears to be unwittingly prophesying how our actions in Vietnam would leave our powerful nation weak and torn. 

Finally, the film addresses the still-continuous battle of evolution vs. creation.  The apes believed that The Lawgiver made Ape in his own image, so the proof of a pre-Simian society must be destroyed in order to preserve the peace of the Ape world.  By his mere existence, Taylor strikes fear into the educated and religious elites...and thus he is in danger of being exterminated.

In short, 1968 was a film with ideas that didn't overwhelm the story we were shown.  A film that works on those levels makes it one that can be appreciated by those who want to watch a good action story (one that even has moments of humor, intended and otherwise) and those who like having a story with intelligence and substance.

Now, it's on to the total disaster. 

As much as Heston is derided nowadays for his acting (though I suspect some of those doing the deriding are liberals who despise and detest Heston for his right-wing politics,  in particular his unapologetic support for guns), he had years of training and appeared regularly on Broadway (as he said, to 'renew my passport').  Heston is also a Kennedy Center Honoree, a two-time Academy Award winner (1959 Best Actor for Ben-Hur and 1978 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award), and ranked among the few whose career spanned from the 1950's to the 2000's.

Mark Wahlberg, on the other hand, has only the Funky Bunch.  I know it is popular to say Walhberg is an actor, but from what I've seen and read he's not any formal acting training.  Nothing wrong with that I suppose, but it doesn't make things easy for someone who moved from being an unsuccessful rapper to being a major thespian.  Walhberg has a great deal of difficulty expressing emotion on screen: so many of his films have him registering the same expression on his face.  2001 was no different: in fact, throughout the film he was totally blank, almost lost.

Now, it can be argued, he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for The Departed, the only one in the cast to be so honored.  In the film, he plays a foul-mouthed tough guy from Boston.  In reality well, let's say he had researched a lifetime for the role (with the exception that this time, he was on the right side of the law).  Yes, I'll say The Fighter was a great film, but he was not exactly going for range in his role there either.  What's odd about Wahlberg in Planet of the Apes is that even in a film like it was (all action, or attempts at it), Wahlberg didn't appear to actually act.  Rather, he appeared lost and almost bored with the whole thing, and given this is the type of movie he should excel at, it makes it even more puzzling. 

(Side note: I found Andy Samberg's impression to be quite funny...because it's true.)

Of course, 2001 was really a remarkably hollow film.  There was little attempt to make it one with wit or subtext (and the few times it appeared to try it came off as half-hearted at best).  Rather than get commentary about the world, we got a monkey danse erotique.  Yes, it was brief, but still creepy.  There wasn't anything in 2001 that merits people watch the film.  In short, after a second viewing 2001 is still a big mess. 

Now, we get to the crux of the matter: comparing the films themselves.  I expect it to be brief.

BEST ACTOR

Charlton Heston

Mark Wahlberg

Yes, Heston's light has dimmed, his persona considered too big, too grandiose for today's audiences that go for characters who have massive complexity to them.  However, Wahlberg's blank and emotionless appearance would puzzle even Ed Wood.  Heston gave a performance of a man who was caught in a frightening situation and was powerless to do anything about it.  Wahlberg just stood around, looking stunned (as he almost always does), and looked around some more.

BEST ENDING

1968

2001

I know that there was an effort to make the 2001 version more shocking than the 1968 version, but the ending just didn't make any sense on any level.  The 1968 version had an ending that A.) made sense, and B.) ended the film.  2001 was a bad and clumsy way to try to make a sequel possible, something that 1968 did not even think about.  As far as that film was concerned, the ending was The End.  The fact that they got four sequels out of 1968 is the work of people coming up with creative solutions to bring new Ape stories out. 

BEST MAKE-UP

John Chambers (1968)

Rick Baker (2001)

Baker is an icon of make-up work and is worth all seven (so far) of his Make-Up Oscars.  However, I'm going to give the slight edge to Chambers only because his work was so revolutionary and so realistic to where the audience never questions that they ARE apes, not actors in make-up.  However, Baker's work on 2001 is the only thing that is good in the film.  Finally, I don't think Baker would shrink from saying that Chamber's work is both impressive and important to his own career as a make-up artist.

BEST VERSION

1968

2001

Again, this is simply a no-brainer.  1968 had wit, a strong story, even moments of comedy.  2001 had nothing save Baker's brilliant make-up work (but considering his work is always brilliant, it's still sad that his work is the only thing good in the film).

Well, now we have the comparisons between the 1968 and 2001 versions of Planet of the Apes.  If it wasn't made clear to you, the original is the better of the two.  Roger Ebert, if I may quote the Dean of Film Critics, was right about the 2001 version vs. the 1968 one.  We still watch the 1968 version, we still marvel at it, and on a personal note, I still am taken by the twist ending even though I know how it will end. 

In the end, the 1968 version of Planet of the Apes stands the test of time and will be around for a long time.  The 2001 version is an embarrassment for all concerned, a film that should not have been made, and just something that in the entire Planet of the Apes franchise, is just horrible in almost every way imaginable.

Next Planet of the Apes Film: Rise of Planet of the Apes

Rise of Planet of the Apes: A Review

RISE OF PLANET OF THE APES

The Planet of the Apes Retrospective

Shock The Monkey...

Rise of Planet of the Apes has a very difficult road to travel. Is it a prequel to the original Planet of the Apes or a first of an independent series of its own?  Well, judging from the final product itself, it appears to be both, and while Rise of Planet of the Apes is certainly a fun picture, I can't quite see it as an Ape picture.

Will Rodman (James Franco) is close to finding a cure for Alzheimer's Disease thanks to tests performed on chimps, specifically one called Bright-Eyes.  Just as Will is about to convince the board of Gen-Sys Corporation to up the funding, Bright-Eyes literally crashes the presentation, showing the downside of Will's new drug...or so we think.  Actually, she was merely being protective of her newborn chimp.  Board director Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo) orders all the chimps exterminated, but the baby chimp is smuggled out by Will's assistant Franklin (Tyler Labine).  Will, convinced his new drug will work with a bit of fine-tuning, continues his experiments on the baby chimp.  It is important to Will that it work because his own father, Charles (John Lithgow) is suffering from Alzheimer's. 

Three years later, the drug works wonders: Dad regains his cognitive skills and the chimp, now named Caesar (Andy Serkis in motion-capture animation) shows intelligence higher than any chimp has ever possessed.  As Caesar grows up and has a command of American Sign Language, an accident, brings them to zoo veterinarian Caroline (Freida Pinto).  Within five years time, Caesar is an adult chimp, Will and Caroline are in love, and Charles has a new lease on life until Will discovers to his horror that the drug's effects are not permanent.  Charles slips back into dementia and causes an accident which sparks his neighbor's wrath.  Caesar literally leaps to Charles's defense, but this only brings animal control and Caesar is taken to a primate shelter run by John Landon (Brian Cox) and his son, Dodge (Tom Felton).

This place is horrible for Caesar: he is treated inhumanely especially by Dodge Landon and is beaten up by other apes.   However, using his intelligence, Caesar soon takes over the facility, waiting for the right time to take revenge on his abusers and return to Will and Caroline.  Will, for his part, continues work on his drug, and finds a more powerful formula.  The tests are proving so successful that Jacobs gives it top priority, even after Will discovers the drug will kill humans but not apes.  Caesar has finally taken one beating too many by Dodge, and does what has never been done before: he speaks, crying "NO!" when Dodge attempts to beat him again.  Now, Caesar rallies all the other apes to escape the facility and thus begins the Conquest of the Planet of the Apes...an epic battle between man and beast over the Golden Gate Bridge. 

This is an interesting point of debate when it comes to Rise of Planet of the Apes: is it prequel or complete reboot to the Planet of the Apes franchise?  Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver's screenplay can be interpreted either way.  On the "prequel" side the film hints at certain elements that leave it open to it taking place before the original Planet of the Apes (a spaceship that is headlined as "Lost in Space" could be the ship that would eventually crash on the Planet of Apes).  On the "reboot" side the film totally ignores the storyline set up from Beneath Planet of the Apes onward.  Therefore, while Rise of the Planet of the Apes has elements of the Ape series, its divergence from major elements of the established storyline make it more a reboot.

Let's leave that aside for the moment and focus on the film itself.  Rise of Planet of the Apes is exciting with a lot of good action scenes (once the ape rebellion begins, the film doesn't lose its almost breathless pacing).  The credit for that is in Rupert Wyatt's directing: he did well in the action scenes.  Where the story went a bit wrong is in two places: people and in-jokes. 

If you are going to start a new Apes franchise (as Rise appears to be doing), it makes it hard when you have so many references to the original Planet of the Apes.  When Caesar is first taken to the primate facility, the evil Dodge Landon (the name itself a reference to two characters in the first film) taunts all the other apes, then as the camera pulls away, we can hear him shout, "It's a madhouse! A MADHOUSE!" again, referencing one of the more memorable lines from Planet of the Apes.

Granted, I laughed, but my best friend and I, having seen the original, were the only ones laughing.  This leads me to think that the rest of the audience haven't seen the original and thus didn't get the reference.  Two of his fellow chimps were named Cornilia and Maurice (which suggests references to original character Cornelius and the actor who played Dr. Zaius--Maurice Evans).  By the time we got another version of the iconic "Take your stinkin' paws off me..." line (and even a virtual Charlton Heston cameo), the references were all becoming a bit too distracting and a too cute for their own good.

The second flaw I found in Rise of Planet of the Apes is in the human element.  We didn't get to know the characters well because a lot of time was devoted to building the revolution.  For example, we know Dodge was cruel to the apes, but we never got why he had such a hatred for the animals in his care.  Worse was Caroline, who didn't add anything to the film except a romance that never appeared to be part of the story of how the apes came to decide in all-out war against humans.

We can actually expand this to the apes: while we know that Caesar and the other apes were mistreated by the Landons, what was the motivation for all the other apes to rise up in rebellion?  One can ask how the apes gained intelligence almost equal to Caesar's at such a fast rate. 

The flatness of the characters extends to the performances.  Almost all the characters in Rise of Planet of the Apes played just one emotion: Dodge was always angry, Jacobs always greedy, Caroline was always pretty, the Reardon's neighbor (David Hewlett) was always angry (to the point where it was becoming comical).  Pinto suffered the most out of the script's lack of human interest: she was just there.  It's not so much that the performances were bad as they were underwritten (though props to Felton for handling an American accent well, although maybe he should stay away from being the bad guy in films for a while).

The better performance (human character) came from Lithgow.  The scenes with him and Franco as father and son played beautifully (making their final scene rather sad and touching).  It is unfortunate that he doesn't make it to the closing credits, given how his story of a man who is restored to life only to see it cruelly snatched away is more interesting than the 'love story' between Will and Caroline (although it is reminiscent of the Flowers for Algernon adaptation Charlie).  Franco doesn't quite pull of the "scientific genius" aspect of Will, but he did show himself better when playing the concerned son.  Granted, this plot element wasn't the most original in Rise of Planet of the Apes, but it gives us the required motivation for Will's unethical and illegal actions.

This is the time to single out the best performance (non-human character): Andy Serkis' Caesar.  Serkis is now the go-to man when it comes to motion-capture performances, and he has the movements of a chimp down perfectly, but he also makes Caesar a sympathetic character though at times, a bit frightening in how he looks: menacing when he isn't suppose to be.    I'd vote him a special Oscar for continuing to give great performances without being able to be seen (as when he played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Return of the King).

Now, Rise of Planet of the Apes doesn't strictly leave the door open for a sequel (though a brief scene after the credits start does hint at the future of humanity) but it doesn't close the door to one either.  I do find fault in that once the revolution begins it doesn't appear to have a grand strategy in overthrowing mankind, more of a 'leave us in peace' ending.  Still, the final third of the film is exciting, with genuine moments of tension and even tenderness that almost make up for how the first two thirds both move slowly in the human story of the film and fast in the ape story.

It is entertaining but in retrospect there isn't a great deal of monkey business in it. 

DECISION: C+

Planet of the Apes Series Retrospective: The Conclusions

Next Planet of the Apes Film: Dawn of Planet of the Apes

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part II: A Review

HARRY POTTER & THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART II

Hallow's Eve...

Yes, let us all wear black, for we now must take a long moment of mourning: the Harry Potter series has come to an end.  What a tragedy for all humanity.  No more Harry Potter stories from J. K. Rowling (the Single Greatest Author in the History of Civilization: screw those useless hacks Shakespeare or Christie or Neruda or Lewis, THEY never wrote about Nymphadora Tonks), and thus, no more Harry Potter movies.

How will so many people now function with this brutal knowledge?  How can the world continue spinning while we must, MUST continue our lives with no more tales from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry?  Shouldn't we put the flags at half-staff? 

This monumental event in the history of humanity, ranking up there with the fall of Rome, the defeat of the Nazi regime, the discovery of America, or Neil Armstrong's voyage to the Moon; actually, Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part II is GREATER than all those events. It must be commemorated annually, we must tell our children's children where we were when we realized...

This is The End, beautiful friend, THE END...The end of all things.  Life has obviously lost some of its appeal, for Harry Potter is no more.

Yes, I am being thoroughly facetious.  In another essay I shall offer my Personal Reflections on the Harry Potter franchise, but suffice it to say I have never fallen under the spell of The Boy Who Lived and am at a loss to understand why this particular franchise has become something people grab onto like others would grab onto someone slightly less important than Harry Potter, say, Jesus Christ.  Honestly, I could never tell the difference between a Dementor and a Death Eater.

Be that as it may, we now have the last of the Harry Potter films, well, to be precise the second part of the last Harry Potter film.  Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part II has me thinking it would have been able to be collapsed into one film (a very long one, granted) but there really to me was nothing to have others hyperventilate to the degree they have been. 

We pick up right where we left off at Part I: Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) has the Elder Wand, and now Harry (Daniel Ratcliffe), Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) now must find the other Deathly Hallows to stop Voldey from being immortal.  Hogwarts School is now completely taken over by Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) and is no longer a safe haven.  Still, as the trio get more horcruxes (one within Gringott's Bank where we spend some time at), we now must go to Hogwarts where there is one more Horcrux (before I forget, the horcruxes are where Voldemort has parts of his soul). 

Within Hogwarts, the trio has allies: Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) and surprisingly, former Class Clutz Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis).  The majority of Deathly Hallows II takes place there, where an epic battle takes place between Voldermort's Army and the students at Hogwarts.  We do get side trips into the Pensieve (allowing Harry to see the memories of a certain character), the Forbidden Forest and what appears to King's Cross Station: Heaven.  After an all-night siege at Hogwarts, we finally get many confrontations between Harry and Voldey, and we close Deathly Hallows Part II with a short epilogue taking place 19 years later at Platform 9 3/4.

Having seen Deathly Hallows Part I, I still fail to see why Deathly Hallows deserved two films.  Frankly, given how massive the J.K. Rowling book was I figure any adaptation of Deathly Hallows would short-change the text.  Let's take a look at the massive battle at Hogwarts (which comprises the bulk of the film).

At the end of the night when Harry goes to see who has lived and who has died, we see that both Remus Lupin (David Thewlis) and his love, Nymphadora Tonks (Natalia Tena) as well as Fred Weasley (James Phelps) have been killed in the battle.  Of course, it is all off-screen, so whatever emotionally impact their deaths might have had is lost on a muddled Muggle like myself.  The readers have an emotional attachment to the characters (and get the bonus of reading their deaths), but judging by the film itself, we can't mourn for characters we don't see all that much.  We can't mourn for them because we didn't get to know them in this film (emphasis mine).  Yes, if (like myself), you've watched all the Harry Potter films, you might mourn for them.  However, since we didn't see them die, how can you truly mourn when they just pop up dead?

That might be at the heart of why Deathly Hallows (both One and Two) are a bit hollow.  We have to rush through so much material we can't get any idea of why certain things happened.  Whatever conflict inside Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) had about having to be part of Voldey's Army (or what he was actually doing inside Hogwarts while the battle was going on) is not addressed.  Same goes for the relationship between Neville and Luna Lovegood (Evana Lynch), which I don't even think was ever addressed or even hinted at in either Part I or from Order of the Phoenix onward, is now something that has to be accepted as an article of faith. 

That leads me to another issue I have with.  Everyone in Deathly Hallows II has a lovely propensity to treat the text as if it were Holy Writ.   Everyone is so serious in Deathly Hallows II, and yes, before any Pot-Heads go after me, I am aware that it is all very serious material.  Still, given how Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) pops up in King's Cross station of Heaven, you'd think or hope he'd have some humor to the situation.  No, we can't have any humor in Deathly Hallows (no gallows hallows humor), because everything here is so important.  We have to treat all the events as if they were major moments not just in the Harry Potter franchise, but major events in film history: Ron and Hermione kiss (call me a Muggle, but while I did expect that to happen, it still seem to come out of nowhere)!  The trio face off an albino dragon and nearly drown in Gringotts! 

Frankly, I feel I was sold a bill of goods: while I grant that the battle at the Room of Requirement was exciting, what I had been told was an epic moment of brilliance at the vault of Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter) was not (side note: I didn't see much if anything in Deathly Hallows Part II that would justify a 3-D ticket, but I digress).  In its efforts to be important and great, Deathly Hallows II was not all that good.

However, this isn't to say that it was lousy.  A particular highpoint was Rickman's Snape; throughout the entire franchise (I would single out Half-Blood Prince) he's been a complex character: neither as evil as Voldermort or as good as Lupin.  While his fate was surprisingly gruesome (more so in that it wasn't graphic), it was also remarkably touching.  Here, we got an abridged version of the relationship between Severus and the future Lilly Potter (Geraldine Somerville) which has motivated all his actions.  I would argue that it was pretty obvious what Snape's true nature was from Sorcerer's Stone, and that I had figured out what kind of person Severus Snape was without having to read any of the books, but I digress.

As I've stated, the massive nature of Deathly Hallows II (at a mere two hours and ten minutes) doesn't allow for much stopping to have any of the other characters from the series (such as Emma Thompson's Sybil Trelawney, Robbie Coltraine's Hagrid, or Jim Broadbent's Horace Slughorn) to be anything but cameos in the film (I would even argue they weren't relevant to the story on film, so their appearance was unnecessary).

The film was so large that I was not even aware that characters like Goblet of Fire's Fleur Delacour (Clemence Poesy) or Oliver Wood (Sean Biggerstaff) were even in Deathly Hallows II (curious side note: his character hasn't officially appeared since Chamber of Secrets and while I don't remember him being in that film his appearance in Deathly Hallows II is an even bigger surprise to me...and I don't remember seeing him in this film either). 

Now, I'm going to digress slightly to say that if Deathly Hallows Parts I and II were combined, it would run slightly more than four and a half hours.  After seeing both of them, I still think it could have been possible to have combined them into maybe a three to three and a half hour film.  It might seem strange for me to say that given how A.) I complain about the length of all the Potter films, and B.) how one of my complaints for both Deathly Hallows is that they are far too long.  However, Deathly Hallows is by far the longest of the Harry Potter books, so it would already have to be long.  Also, we could have cut a lot of the dancing from Part I and gotten to the horcrux of the matter faster (pun intended).

Again and again, I think the length of Deathly Hallows II brought the picture down.  We have near the end a battle between the evil Bellatrix and Mama Weasley (Julie Walters).  I imagine in the book its an epic confrontation, but in Deathly Hallows II its all done rather quickly.  To my mind, it was both anti-climatic and rushed.  Voldey's end feels the same (especially in the anti-climatic part). 

In all of this, I have only mentioned Rickman in terms of performances.  I will grant a little leeway to Fiennes: I can tolerate Voldemort being rather hammy with that breathy delivery to his lines (I will always imitate "The Boy Who Lived....come to die"), so I can't fault him for being over-the-top. WAY over-the-top.  Smith finally had something to do as the good (in every sense of the word) Professor, with her leading a "Hogwarts Spring" with the greatest of ease.

The younger set have been consistently good (I'll confess that Watson was the weakest of the trio, but in Deathly Hallows II she isn't as bossy or annoying as she was in other Potter films, so that's a plus).   I've always been a fan of Luna (I think she is the character I resemble most if Facebook tests are to be believed), and Lynch has also been consistently good in all her appearances.  After Order of the Phoenix, I thought Lewis should get more screen time and credit for making Neville quite heroic (given how he'd always appeared a bit of a yutz in the early Potter films), so it was good to see him rise to the occasion.  (Side note: how disappointed I was to see my favorite villain Dolores Umbridge not appear, but I can understand.  That pink would have stood out garishly against all of the Dark Lord's Dark Brigade). 

Now, I will say that screenwriter Steve Kloves has never failed to follow J.K. Rowling's favorite literary device: the Deus Ex Machina.  Here, we get the Ultimate in D.E.M. (topping even that damn time-reversal thing from Prisoner of Azkaban): a literal resurrection.  Of all the things that would drive me crazy in how Harry never truly solves his problems but has them solved by an outside source, this one takes the cake.  No worries, mate: Harry may die, but he just pops back to life to stop Voldemort at the most opportune moment.  It almost robs one of the chance to really put Harry in mortal danger if he won't have to face the consequences of death, at least the first time.

The Boy Who Lived Indeed.

Finally, at the Epilogue, I've heard some people love the make-up work on the youngsters to make them look old, others have found them laughable.  I'd say, why have an Epilogue at all, but since we have one, might as well go over it.  The make-up work was to my mind uneven: Ratcliffe and Felton looked awful as old Harry and Draco respectively, but the Weasleys looked all right.  My only question is, don't they have computers that can show you what someone will look like years from now?  Couldn't they have used those to make them well, more believable?  Just a thought.

David Yates, having helmed every Potter film since Order of the Phoenix, brought the series to a respectable if not brilliant conclusion (certainly not to the brilliant conclusion I am demanded to say it is). All the other technical aspects (the cinematography, the sets especially) were on the high-end of production and they do deserve serious Oscar consideration (maybe one for Rickman, someone who should have an Oscar).  I would say the only fault in this aspect is Alexandre Desplat's score: it didn't quite capture the power of the battle scenes, but that's a trivial detail.

I've heard a lot of nonsense about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II being a serious contender for a Best Picture Oscar nomination (the Dark Knight of 2011, so to speak).  Given how nutty the Academy has been over the years, I wouldn't put it past them to give it a Best Picture nod, but I will wonder why.   The film isn't as good as everyone has been telling me it is, and I think it's more the hoopla around this cultural touchstone more than anything else that is driving this passion for Potter.   I could not, cannot, and have not worked great enthusiasm for the Harry Potter series no matter how often I've tried.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II is not a bad film, but not a great film.

To its credit, I found Hallows II less Hollow than Hallows I.   However, I end this review with a question for all the Pot-Heads:

WHERE DID NEARLY-HEADLESS NICK GO? I DEMAND ANSWERS! 

DECISION: C-

Next: Personal Reflections on Harry Potter

* I have read one book (The Sorcerer's Stone), I didn't like it and had no interest in reading another Harry Potter book. 

Putting the Red in Red, White and Blue. Lucille Ball Centenary: Some Thoughts

1911-1989

LUCILLE BALL

Lucille Ball is such an icon of television that we forget that she had a career long before I Love Lucy.  Today, on what would have been her One Hundredth Birthday, I pause to look beyond Lucy Ricardo, or Lucy Carmichael, or Lucy Carter, to see Lucille Ball, Queen of the B-Pictures.

I am going to take a guess that she wouldn't like having that title applied to her.  However, I also think she was eternally grateful to be a working actress, and that's really what Ball was: a working actress: no job too big or small.   She could play anything: drama (The Big Street), musical (DuBarry Was A Lady, more on Mame later), and of course, comedy (Miss Grant Takes Richmond). 

That may have been the problem.  Her studios (she jumped around from RKO to MGM) simply didn't know what to do with her.  It was obvious she had talent, but the group of female comedy stars was rather limited: either in the Fanny Brice style (a bit of a dunce) or the Mae West type (a sharp-tongued seductress).  Ball's style was more physical, with the fact that she was beautiful making things more funny.  However, as I heard in the documentary Finding Lucy, funny women didn't sell tickets; beautiful women did. 

Therefore, she bounded around Hollywood, gaining some fame but never the breakout role she yearned for.  As a side note, she had at least two chances to be in a BIG movie.  The first was when Cecil B. DeMille offered Ball a role in his massive circus epic The Greatest Show on Earth, but she had to pull out because of her pregnancy.  The second was when she was seriously considered for the role of Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate (eventually played by Angela Lansbury).  I personally think Lucille Ball would have been sensational as the monstrous Mrs. Iselin, given her career a turn that would have shocked everyone at just how good an actress she was.  Well, all speculation.  Yet I digress.

As she went on in her career, I go back to some of the films I can recall.  Take the first film she made with the love of her life, Desi Arnaz.  Whether it was an omen or not we don't know, but somehow the title Too Many Girls seemed more like the title to Arnaz's autobiography.  It's a delightful musical romp, with Ball's singing surprisingly good.  I cannot say for certain if it was dubbed (I found nothing as of yet to prove or disprove that Ball did her own singing in the film).  However, the end product shows that she could do musicals.

Now I get on to Mame.  I remember seeing it once, and I would say that her voice was a bit deep for the Jerry Herman songs.  There were problems with the film (and yes, I think Ball was too old to believable play the part of Mame Dennis), but to single her out for the failure of Mame is unfair.  Now, it has been a while since I've seen it, so perhaps my memories of it are different than the actual film itself.  Still, Mame was not all Lucille Ball's fault. 

Even if the producers had realized she didn't have a good singing voice, why hire her in the first place?  Yes, there would be publicity, but ultimately it would have been the wrong kind.  A bigger factor was her age: even she should have realized that at age 63 she could not play a woman in her thirties/forties. 

I think that her best work was for television, not just in television, but for television.  She became the first woman to head her own television production and the first to head a studio (Desilu--the company she and Arnaz formed to produce I Love Lucy).  Also, if it weren't for Lucille Ball we might not have a Comic-Con, an Oscar for Sean Connery. or a Tom Cruise franchise.  It was her studio, Desilu, that produced The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible, and Star Trek.   She was the one that gave these shows the OK, and it shows her to have been a shrewd businesswoman. 

Moreover, both she and Arnaz created syndication.  They did not want to record I Love Lucy in New York but in Los Angeles, and they didn't want it on kinescope but on film.  In exchange for a pay cut, CBS gave them the rights to the show after the first broadcasts.  In typical Hollywood lack-of-foresight, CBS did not think anyone would want to see a show twice.  Thanks to their thinking, we have I Love Lucy preserved when so many other early television programs are lost, and we also have the extremely lucrative home video market.  Without Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, audiences today would not be able to enjoy programs both old and new: it's worth considering that the sci-fi show Firefly did not become popular until afterit went to DVD, so in a sense, Nathan Fillion should thank Lucy for his career and her legacy. 

And what a legacy she left.  Even today, I Love Lucy is being watched.  It isn't because it's old. It isn't because it's required.  It's because it is just funny.  Moving beyond the iconic scenes (Job Switching's famous chocolate assembly line, Lucy getting hopelessly drunk on Lucy Does A Commercial,  L.A. At Last!'s hilarious William Holden scenes) what I Love Lucy has at its heart is the story of four people who care about each other, in situations that are familiar to us (the need for more income, a desire for fame or at least public recognition) though they were always exaggerated. 

I still find I Love Lucy hilarious because the situations have a logic to them but they are at times so bizarre that it's impossible not to laugh.  One episode I remember is Lucy Learns to Drive.  It it, the Ricardos get a new car to drive to California and decide to return an old jalopy Fred Mertz got them.  In Lucy's eagerness to teach Ethel to drive, the girls hit the back of the jalopy.  Deciding to get it fixed before the boys find out, Lucy takes it to the dealership...only to return with the jalopy now in the back of the new car! 

Even before we got that twist (which did have a logic to it, an odd logic but logic nonetheless), I was on the floor laughing.  Those kinds of laughs are hard to come by nowadays, simply because a lot of present-day comedy appears to be innuendo-driven (case in point, Two and A Half Men).  Still, I'm willing to bet people will be watching I Love Lucy more than Two and A Half Men or That 70's Show.  This isn't to say modern comedies should be dismissed (case in point, The Office), but I Love Lucy is still the standard that all situation comedies are measured by.

One thing that should be remembered about Lucille Ball is that she, unlike so many other Hollywood stars, survived the blacklist during the "Red Scare" of the 1950's.  Ball admitted that she had registered as a Communist in the 1930's, and any other star making such an admission would have had their career sunk.  People were fired or forced out of work for lesser things.  However, her confession came with a caveat: she had registered as such only to humor her socialist grandfather. No solid evidence has ever been found to support the idea that she was a "fellow traveler".  I don't think she was really even interested in politics, let alone such left-wing politics as Communism. 

I can't say that she helped usher the end of the witch-hunt, but she did prove that even with documented proof of Communist registration, you could still survive.  I think it had to do with the fact that her sponsor Phillip Morris, one of the only times I am thankful to a cigarette company, backed Ball and Arnaz fully (money will always trump comradeship), and that the "Lucy" character was just so beloved the idea that Lucille Ball was a threat to America was downright laughable.  The fact that Arnaz was himself a victim of Communism, forced to leave his native Cuba because of it, no doubt helped.  As he later quipped, 'The only thing Red about Lucy was her hair...and even that was fake!"

This isn't to belittle or diminish the fear that the Red Scare created.  However, if it were not for the popularity of the show and the public's love for Ball (if, say, she had remained on radio), her career might never have recovered.  A great deal of television history turned on her survival of this 'scandal'.

In the long run, Lucille Ball will be remembered for her television work, as well she should be remembered for it.  However, I think that her films pre-I Love Lucy have great moments of acting and comedy (The Long, Long, Trailer, while good and charming, at times does appear to be I Love Lucy on the big screen, and I found Forever, Darling to be a bit dull, even creepy with James Mason floating about).  After I Love Lucy, her films did well, but for better or worse, the shadow of Lucy Ricardo filled the screen.  Finally, after the disastrous reception Mame got, she was scared off films forever.  Her final effort to revive the "Lucy" character, Life With Lucy, was also rejected, a total flop with critics and audiences.  It was a sad and sorry end to an extraordinary legacy. 

I think this made her more reclusive, but life or Fate (however she or you define it) allowed her one last moment of glory.  When she presented with Bob Hope at the 61st Annual Academy Awards, both received a rapturous standing ovation.  Ball even managed to show off a daring amount of leg for a woman her age, and more remarkably, managed to get away with it.

It seems fitting that Ball at least had the opportunity to see that the public will always love Lucy, no matter how often she finds herself in disasters (including the 61st Annual Academy Awards, which started with the infamous "Snow White" musical number, perhaps one of the lowest moments in Oscar history). 

Still, why would we measure Lucille Ball's success or failure based on one show?  Instead, we should focus on the fact that she wouldn't rest on her laurels, that she continuously pushed herself as a performer (even when the results like Mame or Life With Lucy failed spectacularly).  The fact that she tried something new as she grew older, to my mind, is a positive. 

All Lucille Ball wanted to be was an actress.  What she ended up becoming was an icon. 

Planet of the Apes (2001): A Review (Review #247)

PLANET OF THE APES (2001)


The Planet of the Apes Retrospective

Stop This Planet of the Apes I Want to Get Off!...

I remember going to see the remake of Planet of the Apes.  The theater was sold-out.  It was going to be a BIG movie.  The audience was excited to see this BIG movie (and I suspect to most of the audience, an original film).  Before the movie began, I saw two guys actually get into a fist-fight over seats.  Both argued that they had arrived at what I figure is prime seating (middle of the midsection of the theater), with their girlfriends "saving" their seats.  Neither would budge, so they settled it by throwing a few punches at each other.  The rest of the audience was stunned by this reaction, and both groups were ushered out of the theater.  

I tell this story not just because this was the first (and so far, last) time I've ever witnessed such a sorry spectacle, but because the fist-fight was more interesting and entertaining that Planet of the Apes, one of biggest disasters of 2001.

Captain Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) is an astronaut deep in space.  On his ship, he is training a chimp, Pericles, to fly a pod so that the chimp can fly into a space storm rather than send a human (much to Leo's displeasure).  Pericles does so, and gets drawn into the storm.  Leo gets into a pod himself, to as he put it, "goin' to get my chimp".  Into this storm Leo flies, while the crew of the space station watch in horror as they start losing power and receiving a strange Mayday call but not from Leo.

Leo flies through the storm and straight onto a mysterious planet that vaguely resembles Dagobah from The Empire Strikes Back.  He's not there five minutes when he finds himself being chased along with a group of cavemen-looking humans.  Leo quickly finds he's being chased by apes, led by the ruthless General Thade (Tim Roth) and his right-hand gorilla, Attar (Michael Clark Duncan).  Leo, along with a family comprising a man (Kris Kristofferson), a beautiful woman (Estella Warren), a young man (Luke Eberl), and an adorable little girl, are all captured and taken to the Ape City.

There, Leo finds a world filled with more apes, and the human trader Limbo (Paul Giamatti), an orangutan, starts branding and selling the new captures.  One chimp, Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), a human rights activist (?) gets in his way and buys Leo and the woman.  She is the daughter of Senator Sander (David Warner), whom Thade covets.  Leo, with the help of the woman and another human slave (Erick Avari), escape with the help of Ari and her friend Krull (seriously...Krull?) (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). 

Thade and Attar begin a pursuit of this human, and Leo and his entourage (pun intended) head for the sacred but forbidden city of Calima where Leo's instruments tell him his friends are at.  With him are the other slave, another slave (Evan Dexter Parke), the woman, the boy, Ari, Krull (!), and Limbo (taken against his will).  In Calima Leo makes a shocking discovery: Calima (which he discovers stands for CAution LIve aniMAls) the remains of his crashed space station.  It appears that while looking for him the Oberon itself crashed on this uninhabited planet, and the apes are the descendants of the monkeys they had brought with him. 

After getting over the shock, Leo reluctantly takes on the mantle of leader of the humans, who have flocked to Calima to see the human who defies the apes.  After the final battle (which is stopped by would you believe, Pericles?) apes and humans will try to live together in peace.  However, Leo wishes to go back to his home, so he boards Pericles' pod and flies off.  He gets back to a planet that looks like Earth, only to find one the dumbest and most illogical endings in film history.

Planet of the Apes is such a fiasco, such a misfire, that it boggles the mind that the director is Tim Burton and that it took three people to write this nonsense (William Broyles, Jr., Laurence Konnar, and Mark Rosenthal).  Both the direction and the screenplay make Planet of the Apes such a mess that one can either watch in stunned disbelief, in irritation, or in sheer laughter that so much time and effort was spent on trying to make a bad film even worse.

I think that the chief problem for Planet of the Apes (and that is saying much) is that it couldn't decide whether it was allegory or action.  You could have a movie where having humans as slaves, where apes question whether humans have souls, serves as commentary about how humans see each other.  You could have a movie where a battle between humans and apes for control of the planet (a Battle for Planet of the Apes, perhaps) be filled with great battle scenes.  What you can't have is one where you try for one, then drop it without reason.

The human factor actually is what makes Planet of the Apes more muddled.  On this unnamed planet, humans are able to speak just as well as apes.  Furthermore, the apes are fully aware that humans are able to speak just as well as they can.  Therefore, you can't logically have humans be animals because animals can't speak.  However, you have ape children demanding human children as pets.  As a result, you have a wild inconsistency in how humans are to be seen: are they animals or merely victims of ape bigotry?  You cannot have it both ways, but the film is trying to.

By focusing so much attention on 'action', we get no chance for character development.  Right after Leo crashes onto this planet we see this is a planet of apes, so there is no suspense about how talking humans (emphasis mine) got to be dominated by talking apes.  We jump from one action scene to another without any time to stop to know the characters man or beast. 

I digress to point out that Planet of the Apes also made a disastrous decision to have the dominant society "ape" present-day society.  Maybe Burton and the writers thought they were being clever, but they only ended up making the film unintentionally funny.  Seeing ape children play basketball isn't clever (but it did make one wonder how the apes found time to play games or where the simian version of Dr. Naismith emerged from).   There were also moment in Planet of the Apes that were downright painful, almost creepy, in the film's efforts to mirror our times.  When the humans were making their escape, we are treated to a scene of an old orangutan being entertained by his much-younger wife.  Not only was it an ugly scene to behold, but it did make it look like something out of Howard the Duck to where all the scenes of apes doing 'human' things passed into parody. 

Perhaps you may have noticed in my review that I gave names to only the apes and Wahlberg's character.  Now, all the human characters have names, but why bother giving them when I don't think they were used by anyone?  We never got to know any of them as individuals, what they desired or what they thought.  Take Kristofferson's character.  He shows up when the apes are chasing the humans, he is separated from his daughters, rescued, and then killed by Thade as the humans make their escape.  We never got to know him, we never got to sympathize with him, we never knew anything about him--and by killing him off so quickly, we never would.

Same goes for the "house human" (the slave in Ari's home who runs away with them: and I should add I feel uncomfortable with the phrase 'house human' given the connotation to the phrase 'house negro' and am puzzled as to how the three screenwriters would think it was a wise decision to use that phrase).  He appeared to be totally fearful of his ape masters, so why did he all of a sudden decide to run away with this group?  Even worse, he really had nothing to do: he wasn't rallying other humans to Leo's cause, he wasn't thinking about going back to the security of slavery, he was just...there.

This idea that the characters are just there, with really nothing to do, is reflected in all the performances.  As impossible as it may sound, I have discovered through Planet of the Apes that it is possible to wildly overact while in complete ape make-up.  Both Roth and Giamatti were so over-the-top in the film one wonders if they had any direction at all.  Roth's character was a disaster: always raging but never providing a reason as to why he had this utter hatred for humans.  Even when he was attempting to 'romance' Ari, it was with such anger it looked like he didn't want to be there.  Giamatti's orangutan was I figure the comic relief, but nothing he said was either funny or clever, just annoying.  Having him ask the humans, "Can't we all just get along?" does not help.  It's neither witty or good, but cringe-inducing.

Let's move on to the star of Planet of the Apes.  For years people have been trying to convince me that Mark Wahlberg is some extraordinary actor, up there will Colin Farrell or James McAvoy, that he is this icon of cinema.  Here, there is no proof he can think, let alone act.  Throughout Planet of the Apes his facial expression doesn't change: he has this perpetually stunned look in every scene, and his delivery is either rushed or bored.  He is flat and uninteresting and uncharismatic and dull.  The entire motivation for Leo to fly out of the ship is to go after his monkey, but in their first scenes Wahlberg never shows that he even likes his monkey, let alone cares for it so much that he's willing to risk his life for him.  Planet of the Apes played to all the worst aspects of Wahlberg as a star (I can't say actor since he wasn't acting here): one expression and stilted line delivery.

In short Marky Mark, it's a bad sign when you are out-acted by a chimpanzee.

As much as is my policy to not compare remakes (or re-imaginings) to the original, Planet of the Apes is goading me to when you have characters say lines like "Take your stinkin' hands off my, you damn dirty human" (Attar, emphasis mine) or "Damn them (humans), damn them all to hell" (Charlton Heston in a cameo as Thade's father).

I digress to point out his appearance in Planet of the Apes brought to mind something Joan Crawford's daughter Christina said about her in the documentary Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie Star.  She said that she didn't know if Trog was Crawford's last film, but if it wasn't it should have been.  According to IMDB it wasn't Heston's last film, but it should have been: a lousy ending to a brilliant career.

For those who've never seen the original, the references won't make any sense.  For those who have, it just reminds us of a better film. 

Speaking of things that don't make any sense, let's get into the actual story.  Now, if we are to believe the story the humans on Planet X are the descendants of Leo's fellow crewmen.  This means that while they were stranded on this planet, there was a lot of mating going on.  We really don't know how much time separates the crashing of the Oberon and Leo's arrival, but it does make one wonder how the first being to leave (Pericles) is the last to arrive (and arrive, I might add, at the most opportune time).  This is the scenario we're presented: according to the video archives the planet was uninhabited, so therefore the apes are Pericles' fellow chimps (note: we only saw chimps on the Oberon, so unless the gorillas were off-screen we don't know how they got there) and they must have bred just like the crew of the Oberon bred with each other.

How the monkeys got to where they could overpower the humans we know not either because as idiotic as it may sound, this point of logic is irrelevant to Planet of the Apes.  How it became a Planet of the Apes is not important to Planet of the Apes.  Ponder that for a moment. 

Now, let me move on to the ending of Planet of the Apes.  It was a mess, a disaster, a fiasco, and one of the most illogical and idiotic conclusion of all time.  Those who've never seen the original would not know that it had one of the greatest twist endings in film history, and moreover, one that was logical (making it even more horrifying and shocking).  My thinking is that Burton, Wahlberg, and Company decided they were going to try to top the original ending (and maybe leave the door open for a sequel).  However: THE. ENDING. MAKES. NO. SENSE.  Not only is it stupid, but it is a shameless cheat.  I normally avoid spoilers or give warnings, but in this case, I'll make an exception. 

The ending is this: Leo leaves a peaceful Planet of the Apes, crashes onto a planet that looks like Earth (complete with North and South America), and crashes at what appears to be the Lincoln Memorial.  When he walks up to the monument, Wahlberg (with his typically stunned look on his face) looks upon Lincoln to see...General Thade.  In short, he Escaped from Planet of the Apes only to crash onto ANOTHER Planet of the Apes!

Just as I remember the fist-fight pre-Planet of the Apes, I vividly recall the reaction to the conclusion in the theater.  Never before had I heard an audience react with just anger, such fury, yelling all sorts of things at the screen.  Among the kinder things I heard was "COME ON!"  "BOO!"  "YOU'RE KIDDING!"  The entire audience was in an uproar over this.  It WAS a cheat, it WAS a clumsy and shameless effort to get a sequel in, and IT. JUST. DIDN'T. MAKE. ANY. SENSE.  What part of that did intelligent people (and Marky Mark) not understand?

I had never seen or heard an audience so infuriated by anything on the screen.  My experience had/has been that audiences today let whatever is on the screen wash over them.  Audiences have become extremely passive to what they wash, but this, THIS, was just one step too far for them.  Even if the movie had been good (and it wasn't) having such a ridiculous ending that made no sense would have killed it.  The fact that this nonsensical ending (a bungled effort to make it more shocking) was the coda to a poor movie only made things worse.

When I left the theater, I heard the reaction of the audience.  It was one of anger and frustration.  The feeling was one of getting ripped off, of being sold a good action/adventure and getting a hopeless jumble where nothing made sense (even it the world it occupied) and where everything (save Rick Baker's brilliant make-up work) was just awful: acting, story, directing, even the sets (I kept wondering why the first two thirds of the film took place within this dark jungle while the third took place in a desert, the transition from near-dark and damp to light was a bit too much to take).

To the credit of audiences everywhere, Planet of the Apes, while financially successful (no doubt thanks to massive publicity building it as an 'event' film) was immediately rejected by the public.  Any hopes for a sequel died the moment Marky Mark looked upon the "new Lincoln".  In a moment of rare clarity in Hollywood, the producers and studios decided that, even though it made a lot of money, they weren't going to try to make a sequel.  It would have been interesting though, to see if they could truly make a film that was beneath even this Planet of the Apes. 

DECISION: F

2001 vs. 1968 Planet of the Apes: A Comparison

Next Planet of the Apes Film: Rise of Planet of the Apes