(rated PG-13, 110 mins.)
So there’s this single hot, way hot, bachelor Astronaut, Captain Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) who spends two years in space studying chimps. When the mother ship gets weird frequency readings, his team sends his personal pet chimp in a pod cruiser into outer space. When the chimp doesn’t return, Wahlberg flips on his commander – “you don’t send a monkey to do a man’s job” you send Marky-Mark! Wahlberg goes out to find his lovable pet but instead lands in the year 2019 where talking apes dominate and humans are their slaves. Basically this ain’t no petting zoo as master of dark/creepy Tim Burton directs this imaginary world. Enter Ari (Helena Bonham Carter) looking like Michael Jackson in a couple more years of plastic surgery but with a British accent. Ari is the sort of /kind of love interest to Wahlberg who tells her to show him out of this place and he’ll “show her something that will change her world” (to which we’re assuming he means – er, earth.) It just so happens Ari loves humans and assists Wahlberg and his crew of make-shift pals to escape ape land. The beautiful Deana, (Estella Warren), one of the slave humans, comes off as nothing more than a dumb Jane to Wahlberg’s Tarzan, though her father Karubi (Kris Kristofferson) does a fine job looking like a street bum. It’s a good thing Wahlberg has a cute butt because it’s the only thing that saved him as a leading man. Bad ass ape leader General Thade (Tim Roth), steals the flick that made me believe somewhat in monkey love though I didn’t go ape over this movie! Rent the original starring Charlton Heston (who does an unexpected scene stealer in this updated version.)
