Planet of the Apes (2001)

We put this on our LoveFilm list in anticipation of seeing ROTPOTA in the cinema in the not too distant future. Mistake. I had been urged not to see it by fellow blogger Maynard Morissey over in his Horror Diary, but it was too late; it was already in the post, inexorably trudging towards us. The movie started off alright, after some random credits, but then after about 5 minutes an ape said “Get your filthy hands off me you damn dirty human!”, and the film went downhill from there. No character development, rubbish script, no fantastic Tim Burton design, rubbish script, nothing interesting at all, erm, rubbish script!

The film spent about 20 minutes cramming in everything that happened in the first 90 minutes in the 1968 film, and then the next hour making up some crap version of the ending. It was obviously meant to be more of an action film than the original, but leaving out all of the intrigue, emotion, plot, brilliant cinematography and acting ability! I was bored after 20 min, but there was still 80 minutes to go. And all the humans can talk!? Huh, in one fell swoop destroying one of the main narrative points of the first film. Mark Wahlberg was boring, Helena Bonham Carter was boring, Tim Roth was more interesting as Thade, the military general who just wanted to kill all humans; but it certainly was not a performance to rescue the film.

Rubbish, boring, and unimpressive. A waste of time. What a film for my 100th review! If you haven’t seen this film before, please do not.