Dark attraction of the bestial

The original POTA has its fanatical devotees. A mediocre SF action flick with an overpowering twist, it features Charlton Heston doing his woodenest not to be outacted by people in Halloween chimp masks. The faithful claim, or rant, that in the ape/human switcheroo, deep structures are revealed - racism challenged and so on. These people are obviously retarded.

Tim Burton, an OK director who's read a couple of coffee-table art books on the gothic, directs this update. But, apart from an offcut of Edward Scissorhands here or a twist of Sleepy Hollow there, anyone could have been at the helm. Still, it still works well as an actioner. Very well. The pseudo-racial subtext is still there, embarrassingly surfacing as jarring dialogue in the mouth of the only black man on the planet - what, no interbreeding after all that time? And as a replacement for Charlton, big-chested Mark Wahlberg is easily as blank as Heston.

But this time out, as well as finding out just what in tarnation is going on, he's got a bigger problem. Does he go for the human option, the pneumatic but stupid Estella Warren, or for clever but hairy ape Helena Bonham Carter (uncannily like Michael Jackson in her make-up)? The dark attraction of the bestial - now that's what I call a subtext.

Verdict: Ooh-ooh-aah-ahh.