As cheesy as the original Planet of the Apes film is, it sets a pretty high cinematic bar.  It'd be easy to outdo the special effects and best the acting, but tackling the infamous Statue of Liberty ending is an entirely different story.  Duplicating or removing it would be a cop-out, and changing it virtually guarantees the new version won't be any good (it'd be like making Rosebud a woman in a Citizen Kane remake).

While the new ending is a little clunky (and a lot predictable), director Tim Burton does, for the most part, a pretty decent job with his "revisitation" of Apes.  It's probably the most un-Burton-esque film he has made, relying more on special effects, makeup and costume than his typically stunning visual presentation.  Apes is a rare remake that is shorter than its predecessor, and one that doesn't cast actors from the original...because most of them are dead (aside from Charlton Heston, who is dead only between his ears, and makes a brief appearance here).  There are enough differences to make this film unique (for better or for worse), but it's also similar enough to avoid sending diehard Ape fans into nerd comas.

Apes opens in 2029 inside a research station just outside Saturn.  Mark Wahlberg (The Perfect Storm) plays Leo Davidson, a pilot chomping at the bit to fly into an electrical storm (didn't Wahlberg learn to stay away from storms last summer?), but a space chimp is tapped to make the journey before any human lives are risked.  When the monkey's pod disappears, Leo takes off after it, despite the orders to stop from his commanding officer.  Sure enough, Leo's pod vanishes into a Contact-like wormhole that spits him out several hundred years later as he crashes into a strange planet ruled by apes.

Like the first film, there are humans on the planet, but they can talk and have more interaction with their monkey overlords, who act a lot more simian than they did in the original.  Some humans are slaves, some are kept as pets and some have even been molded into butlers, but the apes are firmly in control of things despite their apparent lack of ability to invent stuff beyond rudimentary weapons and armor.  There are no guns, no doctors and generally no knowledge of what lies over the mountain in The Forbidden Zone.

While Wahlberg's Leo is clearly crafted in the same mold as Charlton Heston's Colonel Taylor, the only ape character that makes the evolutionary leap from 1968 to 2001 is Ari, played by Fight Club's Helena Bonham Carter (her ancestor was Dr. Zira, which is almost Ari spelled backward).  Ari, the rebellious daughter of a senator and the ex-lover of the evil General Thade (Tim Roth, Lucky Numbers), leads the Human Rights Faction and, for some reason, develops an instant bond with Leo.

With a few exceptions, the second act follows the original film pretty closely and finds Leo, his hot human squeeze (Estella Warren, Driven), Ari and a handful of others trying to make it into The Forbidden Zone while being chased by the gorilla army (led by Michael Clarke Duncan, See Spot Run). But as things degenerate into Braveheart (Apeheart?) or, worse yet, The 13th Warrior, it becomes clear this film is working its way to a more upbeat resolution, which kind of blows, and, coming from Burton, is just plain disappointing.  Yeah, there's a twist, but you can see it coming from a mile away (assuming you know how the first film ended).

One major improvement in the film is the appearance of the apes.  Rick Baker's (Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas) creatures look amazing and can show much more emotion in their faces.  But nearly all of the apes sound like a bunch of people with fake teeth awkwardly jammed into their mouths (which is what they all are, but still).  Another minor effects complaint is the over-the-top jumping skills of the chimps.  I can overlook the fact that it's preposterous, but the editing of these scenes leaves a little to be desired.  You never once see a clean landing, instead getting a jumpy edit. It's like throwing a dummy off a cliff and then having an actor pop into the shot from the bottom.

Apes, based on Pierre Boulle's novel, only scratches the surface of the complex racial issues and battles over religion versus science that made the first film such a treat.  The screenplay, from William Broyles, Jr. (Cast Away), Lawrence Konner and Mark D. Rosenthal (Mighty Joe Young), does riff on a few of the original's more popular lines, and includes more children and teenage characters, both ape and human.  What's more amazing is the inclusion of a swimming scene for Warren, who got to breaststroke in Driven, too (she used to be a synchronized swimmer).

Maybe it's because half of the actors were buried under latex (or because there's no Johnny Depp), but Apes seems like Burton's least actor-driven film.  There's no weird cross-species chemistry between Wahlberg and Bonham Carter, but there isn't any between him and Warren, either.  Roth sounds nothing like himself but becomes a wonderful snarling antagonist.  If chimps had moustaches, he'd be twirling his.  Danny Elfman's (Proof of Life) score reaches its peak during the opening credits, never factors into the rest of the film, and never equals the unmistakable power of Jerry Goldsmith's original.

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for some sequences of action/violence