"Planet of the Apes"

Davidson soon discovers that not all the apes are hostile, particularly Senator Sandar's daughter, Ari (Helena Bonham Carter, luminous even beneath layers of latex), a human rights activist who believes apes and humans can learn to live together as equals. It's little wonder that Ari develops a crush on Davidson; the movie's greatest failure of nerve is that he doesn't fall head over heels for her.

Instead, "Planet of the Apes" -- its script written by William Broyles Jr., Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal -- sets up a romantic rivalry between Ari and Daena, who vie for Davidson's affections. The conceit doesn't work: Daena, pouty, gorgeous and vacant, looks mighty cute in her skimpy slave threads, but the heart and soul of the movie have been poured into Ari.

Before we get to the gushy stuff, it's important to point out that "Planet of the Apes" is essentially an adventure movie, with Davidson leading the humans in an uprising against an army of beefy, Darth Vader-like apes. Both the special effects and the ape makeup are impressive. There's nothing cheesy about this "Planet of the Apes" -- the battle sequences are nicely executed, and the apes' faces are realistically mobile. What's more, Burton has populated his planet with all types of primates, in different styles and colors: Some resemble chimp versions of the superscary flying monkeys in "The Wizard of Oz," swinging and leaping in ways that are more menacing than delightful. Others are more like stately gorillas, with glossy, wrinkled noses and thick, mobile, human-looking (if hairy) fingers.

The apes here have more character than Wahlberg. He's best at the very beginning of the movie, when he expresses dismay that his chimp friend is going to be flung into space. "Never send a monkey to do a man's job," he says, and the line is only half-funny: The look on his face is dead serious, and you understand it, having gotten a glimpse of Pericles sitting earnestly in his space pod, ready to go, his face scrunched in intense concentration. He clearly wants nothing more than to do his job well. You can't look at that face and fail to see it as only a few steps away from being human.

"Planet of the Apes" is full of little touches like that, as well as lots of pointed jokes about how badly human beings treat animals on this Earth. But by the time the picture rattled to its confusing and badly conceived ending, I couldn't help wishing it had somehow added up to more.

Because as elaborate and impressive as "Planet of the Apes" is on the surface, its truest magic lies in Carter's eyes. Her Ari is a great beauty, even with her gently stooped posture and swinging, swaggering walk. Even beneath the makeup, that face is somehow recognizable as Carter's -- there's something endearingly urchinlike about her expression, even with those thunderous eyebrows completely covered up.

Burton directs one gorgeous and frankly erotic moment between Davidson and Ari: During their first encounter, Davidson is caged, and he desperately, almost brutally, pulls her to him through the bars, imploring her in a whisper for help. She's a little frightened at first, locked in his grasp from behind, but the camera shows us her eyes warming up to him -- there's a flicker of smoldering animal desire there. Later, she looks at him with such liquid love that you wonder how he could even be bothered to look sideways at the bland Daena. Wahlberg doesn't respond to Ari with much warmth; with the exception of one brief moment where, hoping to persuade her to stick with him, he promises her an experience unlike any she's ever had before, the interplay between them is disappointingly cool.

In a romantic rivalry between an ape woman and a human one, is there any way the ape could possibly win out? I wouldn't have thought so before I saw Carter. As she plays Ari, consumed with doomed love, she's as tremulous and intense as a Gothic heroine. When she and Davidson kiss, in a nice little reprise of the kiss between Charlton Heston and Kim Hunter in the original, she's as lovely and as delicate as a Victorian bride. It's clear that she's Burton's most beloved character here. Maybe he simply realized there was no man good enough for her.

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