Indeed, the erstwhile Dirk Diggler doesn’t even risk the comparison, remaining in his tattered Air Force flight suit throughout. But while the technology has permitted some advances - rather mild ones, as it turns out - the scripting hits nothing but obvious and tiresome topical notes, with “political” parallels that may generate snorts of recognition in viewers but are nothing more than cheap gags one might expect in a collegiate revue on the same subject.Īnd when Mark Wahlberg utters the immortal line, “Never send a monkey to do a man’s job,” as he sets out on his trip through time and space, one can’t help but think that a boy has been sent on a man’s job in trying to fill Charlton Heston’s loincloth. With the talent involved as well as the advances in makeup and special effects in recent years, an “Apes” redo seemed justifiable as these things go certainly there was room for an edgier and more provocative table-turning of human-simian relations.
