You went ahead and did it, didn't ya? You went ahead and saw the new Planet of the Apes movie even though you knew Marky Mark didn't show his booty once, and Tim Burton cannot direct his way out of a dampened square of tissue paper. Okay, so I don't blame ya. I mean, even if it is a big steaming pile of chimp poo, who can resist those lovable apes? However, it is sad to note that the entire movie could have been saved, had Tim Burton simply filmed a scene where one of the humans sticks a finger in his bum, smells it, and then falls backward out of a tree.

See, that's my main problem with this movie. The humans were too goddam human! By allowing the humans to talk, Burton broke the cardinal rule of all Planet of the Apes films. In the original flick, you kind of sided with the apes at first, because all the humans were dirty, stinky hippies who should naturally be incarcerated. Then some time passes, and you realize, "Hmmm. Maybe these hippies are stinky, but that's pretty uncool to lock them in cages and experiment on their brains." However! In the new movie, the hippies are yap-yap-yapping the entire time, and you can't help but say, "Jesus! Now I remember why I hate hippies! Will somebody please give that dreadlocked supermodel a frontal lobotomy??"

(Speaking of dreadlocked supermodels, I find it highly unlikely that a prisoner in an ape jail would be given access to lip gloss.)

OKAY! That's all I'm going to say about Planet of the Apes. Waitasecond... I'm going to say one more thing. You know how all your friends are telling you, "Ohhh, the new movie is sooooo AWFUL. You should just rent the original with Charlton Heston." Well, I'm not going to tell you that. What I'm going to tell you is totally different, which is, "Ohhh, the new movie is sooooo AWFUL. You should just rent the Planet of the Apes television series!" Ka-BOINNGGG!

"Wm. Steven Hump-me!" I hear you scream. "You, sir, are blowing my freaking mind! There weren't never no such thing!" Ohhhh, yes there WAS, my friends! And not only that, there was an animated version as well! Ka-BOINNGGG! Ka-BOINNGGG! (Okay, enough with the ka-boinngggs.)

The live-action TV series ran on the CBS network for a whopping 13 episodes back in 1974, and starred Ron Harper and James Naughton as a couple of astronauts who--obviously learning nothing from Chuck Heston's mistakes--crash their ship on the ape planet. When they are discovered, the apes start yelling, "Jesus freakin' Christ! Again with the talking humans! Well, guess we better kill 'em." Luckily, the astronauts run into an out-of-work Roddy McDowell in an ape mask, and together they milk the POTA legend for every last drop, enjoying adventures only slightly less challenging than the average episode of Three's Company.

Nevertheless, if you ever get to see this fascinatingly bad live-action series, you'll see that it still beats the loincloth off Tim Burton's anemic version--which doesn't even contain ONE nude shot! Talking hippies and... did I mention the humans were wearing LIP GLOSS??