Well, after seeing the film twice and letting it digest I have decided that this is a good film. It just can't touch the original. Which is fine really, because they are two totally different movies. However, on my first viewing I did feel quite a bit of disappointment throughout... but this is just a result of expecting something different.

I found parts great, and parts bad. I liked Tim Roth as Thade, but he was way too excited in so many scenes, he was always panting and yelling and jumping around. He is a great villain, totally evil, totally great and menacing, and mostly enjoyable to watch. I just felt like yelling at him to CALM DOWN. He was often panting when he wasn't doing anything to warrant it. But of course, if you've ever seen an excited chimp, then you can see why Thade is acting that way.

The Apes in this film act very much like Apes. I much preferred the more human apes from the original POTA68. I don't know, I didn't like all the snorting and sniffing and jumping... and almost all of them talked in a gruff deep voice, which I didn't really like. Ari's ape behavior was the most distracting because it didn't seem to fit her character, and some just seemed out of place (like the suddenly screaming because she was near water.) I just found a lot of the Ape stuff too annoying. Yeah, I can see what Burton was doing, trying to make it seem like some of the primate behavior they do today, would be totally normal to them if they became a dominate species. I can see what he was trying to do, and I think that's kind of clever. I just didn't like them, it's just my personal preference and I can't fault the filmmakers for this. I'm also a little biased because I like the old POTA68 apes and expected them to be like that.

The acting was mixed bag. Wahlberg was really mediocre, I think he was probably miscast because I've seen him in other things like Three Kings and Boogie Nights, and he was great in those. I guess this role was just not for him. Perhaps he wasn't trying? I don't know. He wasn't terrible or anything, he was just mediocre. Helena Bonham Carter was good most of the time, but there were a few clumsy lines that didn't work, were delivered totally wrong. In parts she also seemed to have trouble acting through that make up, which was understandable really. The rest of the acting was fine, very good or just as good as it needed to be.

The makeup wasn't perfect on all characters, but most of it was very nice and very well done. Ari didn't look any better then the apes in POTA 68 and seemed to have the same mouth movement problems. Thade's was very nice, and most of the time his speech lined up and he looked real, so did most of the other characters.

The ending was my favorite part, and it is a classic, just like POTA 68's was!

I don't know if I'd recommend this film to many people, because I felt the style was rather niche. I just know I did enjoy it. So there will be others as well.