MONKEY BUSINESS MAKEUP MAN STEALS THE SHOW FROM BURTON IN MEDIOCRE `APES' REMAKE REGION Edition

• Published in: Pittsburgh post-gazette (Pittsburgh, Pa. 1978)
• Main Author: RON WEISKIND, POST-GAZETTE MOVIE EDITOR CRED: SAM EMERSON CUT: TIM ROTH, AS THADE, IS A ONE-DIMENSIONAL VILLAIN TO MARK WAHLBERG'S BLAND HERO IN "PLANET OF THE APES."
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Pittsburgh, Pa Pittsburgh Post - Gazette 27.07.2001
• Subjects: Burton, Tim; Roth, Tim; Wahlberg, Mark
• ISSN: 1068-624X

Alas, no [Tim Burton] movie contains less of his personality or style than "Planet of the Apes," a high-concept action film in which the real artist is the six-time Oscar winner Rick Baker, who might as well start clearing room on his mantle for another golden statue. His impeccable ape makeup, painstakingly applied to the performers, allowed Burton to avoid the inferior option of using digital simians. Burton's offbeat sense of humor comes through in other scenes as well, especially those featuring Paul Giamatti as a craven simian slave trader who has some of the best lines in the film. We get just a taste of Burton's playfully grotesque visual sense in the scenes set in Ape City. But his dark sensibilities, his strongly felt affinity for his lead characters and even his spooky atmospherics are largely absent. Desiring only to find a way back home, he leads a group of humans and a couple of sympathetic apes (Helena Bonham Carter and Cary- Hiroyuki Tagawa) toward the forbidden zone, home to the secret of the origins of the ape society. To do so, they must evade the pursuit of the maniacal General Thade ([Tim Roth]), whose hatred of humans seems pathological. Roth plays him with enough viciousness to overcome his lack of complexity.