"Mark Wahlberg amid a cast of apes! No-one can tell which is him!"

"Those chimps are so well trained! They look as if they're out-acting Mark Wahlberg... oh, wait, bacteria can accomplish that!"

"Hey, it's Marky Mark and the Monkey Bunch!"

Now that all the jokes which made you so unpopular at parties are over and done with, let's look at the latest Hollywood bastardization of film classics for commercial gain and artistic demise.

Hmm... well, I suppose I've left no mystery to my opinion. Ah, you've read this far, might as well go on.

Marky Mark is somehow an astronaut in the near future. Hey, if they can train chimps to fly, I suppose it's possible... anyway, he flies into aa electrical storm which conveniently throws him onto a strange world where apes rule and humans are savages that yearn for freedom. Oh, and in this strange world, their sole purpose in life is to talk pretentiously and reference the 1968 "Planet Of The Apes".

As can be guessed, Marky Mark is the human's saviour (well, he DID fall from the sky. Only messiahs do that, you know) who must lead them against the oppressive english apes. At this point I was glad that Tim Roth, Helena Bonhma Carter and Michael Clarke Duncan are buried under mountains of rather fake-looking makeup (Helena looks less like Bubbles the chimp and more like Michael Jackson), because this means I can still watch "Reservir Dogs" with my image of Mr. Orange untainted.

And why oh why is Tim Burton behind this? Had he enough of making brilliant gothic horror and sarcastic schlock comedy that he decided "hmm, I need a career low"? There is nothing in this film to suggest the captain of this shoddy vessel. Burton's creativity seems to have been painted over in the same futuristic rubber as the rest of the film.

Now I've seen a lot of bad films. This is one of the few films I've seen this year that truly disappointed me. I feel like a professor forced to give the star pupil his first F; reluctant, but knowing it has to be said.

As for all the rest of the Hollywood bigwigs who think remakes are so clever (and don't give me that "re-imagining" crap, it's a REMAKE, pure and simple) - damn them! Damn them all to hell!

Stay home and watch a less-fuzzy Charlton Heston show you how it's done in the 1968 original.

Luca (I hate every ape I see, from chimpan-a to chimpan-z) Brasi