Rating: 
Summary: well, the original's still a classic....
Review: **SPOILERS WARNING** (like you should care; I'm review #500-odd).Ain't often I have bad feelings about a movie while I'm still in the theatre. The space stuff was cool, then straight into the 'hunt', and the apes. I mean we all know what the film is, sure, but still, where's the pacing? the suspense? Ari was boring ALL the way. What a snip. Leo was boring. I knew he only wanted to get away, but, geez... The only interesting character was Thade and he was so over the top psycho I believe I shall coin a new term... ahem... "scenery-chewing". Attar - ... all the way thru til a sudden and implausible 'conversion' at the VERY end, and even then only 'cos he mistakenly thought Semos the saviour was breathing down his neck. Thade had been lying to him? Aw boo hoo. Big surprise. No character development there. The comics adaptation improved this somewhat by dropping hints that the wheels were already turning in Attar's mind thru earlier eye-contact and confrontations with resolute humans, but here he just smashed 'em mercilessly (Kris K for example). So did the adaptors just think it thru better in dramatic terms, like Burton should have? Daena - wasted. Any potential love interest anywhere (even Ari, to be daring) - wasted. No stakes I cared about. My biggest concern was when Thade smashed Pericles. It was like the old movies where all you cared about was how hard the bad guy had kicked Lassie, or whether they got the horses out of the burning barn. In those days that was 'cos kid viewers didn't care about adults in films, juist other kids and animals. This time it's 'cos none of the 'adult' characters were worth caring about. Limbo - some funny lines but not too many. I liked his aspirin-pusher at the end best. Spare me the funny, redeemable, cowardly-rogue stereotype for a few pictures now, willya please Hollywood? I micro-dozed thru some Ape City stuff and thought I must have missed Thade's "bring me the spaceman" line but my bud and co-viewer confirms it wasn't there. D'oh!!! I kept waiting for it once I'd woken up for the admittedly more exciting desert scenes, hell, for someone to even explain to Thade that Leo was from space, but it didn't happen. I hate that trailer-only crap (unless it's obviously trailer-only footage).
What the fudge-brownies was Thade's last, eternally-ricocheting bullet all about? It was like a Warner cartoon. And it didn't even hit him in the end did it? It was hard to tell what was going on in there. Had he shot himself dead, or was he just left a blubbering psycho, hiding under a desk in a room no-one could or would unseal?
Good stuff I liked (yes there was some): line homages to original (Attar, Heston); a shot where distant, tiny Leo dismounts before the spaceship wreckage with its' 'prongs' in the foreground, but so brief (stoopid Burton) I only think it was to parallel the shot of Heston dismounting on the beach with Liberty's crown in the foreground; the makeups generally were brilliant, (though the actor's noses sitting behind the ape noses gave them all an uncharacteristic 'blob' real apes don't have, the muzzles needed to be a bit deeper; with Heston and Warner, they weren't really trying, and oddly I think the most truly apelike character was Thade, yet Roth had Baker's least favourite type of face for the makeup. Go figure. Krull - had to be a mountain gorilla, which was a nice touch on Baker's part, though pretty unlikely, as they are so rare I doubt they would have bothered to get a breeding pair for the Oberon menagerie. There are none in captivity even today. Liked also the apes' agility (though some leaps were ridiculous, especially when Attar and Krull battled - must have imbibed some Chateau d'Egg-Shen methinks, as 500-lb male gorillas could leap like that only in their dreams). Liked the realistic 'pounding' fight technique from Attar and Thade when things got frenzied. Liked Ari's submissive body-language when she returns to Thade, and his dominant-male responses. These were real chimp traits, and a nice touch. Someone did some homework. BUT virtually no dramatic follow-thru on the fact that Krull was their general before Attar. They should have run the inn scene from Ladyhawke for a nice, succinct take on how dutiful troops might react to meeting their exiled former commander. None of the other apes were shown to give a hoot, it was just an excuse for the two to get down because of some old rivalry we barely knew about.
Hey those little rockets pack some power for something that is about 85% cabin-space! Lessee - a landing, a take-off, escape velocity and cross-solar-system travel in an eyeblink? Be thankful they finally let the poor widdle thing finally drop exhausted at the end. It had earned it.
The ending only made me think that they think they grafted on Pierre Boulle's 'clever' ending more or less. Clearly no-one in the film production thought it thru. Or to quote a line from a play I read once, "I trust I make myself obscure?".... It was just someone being 'clever'. None of the doomish-feel of the original, hell, less even than the sequels. Less than the TV series!!! BAH!!
Rating: 
Summary: Slanted review as I am a POTA fan from way back
Review: I Loved it. The DVD add-ons are OK, but the best has to be the "simeian training."
Rating: 
Summary: Tim Burton should be ashamed for letting this get released.
Review: This is a movie that relied solely on special effects and makeup for its success. Strip these away and what is left is a bad action movie with two dimensional characters (one woman in the movie is so poorly developed I would say she was one dimensional, I couldn't figure out why she was there other than to look good), horrendous dialogue, and an ending that just came out of left field for me...
Rating: 
Summary: Does Not Touch the Original
Review: This reimaged Planet of the Apes is a fine film on its own but the original still stands the test of time even though the special effects are minimal and outdated. In short, the original is still a classic. The original could have stood on its own without the sequels, but this new one blatantly is set up for one. It is so blatant, that it makes me angry, because now, I want to see what happens to Mark Whalberg's character after he attempts to go back to his time period, only to find out that it has been altered for Apekind and his space shuttle is destroyed. In the original, we know what happened to mankind at the end. In this one, we don't know what happened and this ending to "keep us guessing" is cruel to the audience and even to Mark Whalberg's character. Tim Roth as General Thade and Helena Bonham Carter as Ari are memorable but not so much as Zira and Cornelius, and Mark Whalberg as Capt Leo Davidson does not hold a candle to Heston's TAYLOR. Lastly, the shock ending of the new film definitely does not compare to the classic Rod Serling ending of the original.Therefore, the three star rating is a ying yang rating because I either like it or hate it for different reasons.
Rating:
Summary: Exciting Thrill Ride
Review: I enjoyed this movie from the opening credits to the closing. It kept everyone in my home waiting for the next special effect. Once you get over the issue of talking apes and the chronological inconsistancies, you are swept away by the creativity of the director and the actors. The cameo appearance by Charleton Heston still has me laughing. It is a must buy for any videophiles collection.
Rating:
Summary: This is just plain bad
Review: Too Violent, Too depressing, Too ridiculous. What a mess. Why did they do this movie. I cannot imagine. The writers should never be allowed to make another movie. THey took a perfectly interesting tale of scifi/fantasy and made it a violent almost unwatchable mess. Shame on the populist director for making this drek. The worst part is, that is made a ton of money in the theaters which will cause them all to probably make another one. Maybe it will not be as grotuesque. I must admit though that the ape makeup was awesome.
Rating: 
Summary: Where's Serling when you really need him?
Review: Dead of course. Too bad all the good misanthropes are dead.
The makeup effects are without a doubt jaw dropping.
But I just didn't care.
The original was a witty biting social satire. This is just
an action movie. Big deal about very little.
But I do admire the actors for putting up with the torment.
Rating:
Summary: DAMN THEM ALL TO HELL!
Review: ...for making this awful, awful film. I implore you not to waste your money on this garish feast of cinematic trash. Another cherished SF icon defiled in the worst way.
Rating:
Summary: Apes lose their bananas
Review: The previews looked really good, but after seeing it, I didn't like it very much. The ending was the only part I liked, really cool Sci-Fi moment there. But other than that, this is nothing like the 1968 version or it's sequels. It was also not a very fun Summer movie. For the Summer of 2001, I'd have to rank Jurassic Park 3 and The Mummy Returns hire. Big disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Friends don't let friends watch this garbage.
Review: This has to be the most hideously bad movie I ever endured. The group with which I attended the showing discussed swearing everyone to secrecy and pretending that we had spent the entire time at Denny's or something, but we decided it was our civic duty to tell everyone how awful the experience was, and warn them away.
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